A stationary conference? A hybrid one? Or maybe remote from the studio? If you are preparing to organize a conference, you need to answer the question of what type of event you want to have.

What are the types of conferences and what does their type depend on? The most important thing is where the participants and speakers will be located.

Stationary / in-person conference

This is the most well-known type of conference, in which both participants and speakers are physically located in one place, such as a conference hall. The organizer of an in-person conference may decide to share the content of the speeches online. He can do this by live streaming on popular streaming services such as Facebook or Youtube, or by recording the speakers' speeches and sharing them on his website, social media or a dedicated event platform. In the case of streaming, viewers of the stream can usually only listen to the speeches and do not have the opportunity to ask questions or participate in the Q&A session. The organizer may also decide not to make the event materials available online, in which case everything that happened in the conference room stays right there.

Stationary conference with hybrid elements

An increasingly popular type of conference in which all attendees appear in person at the event, while some speakers arrive at the venue and some connect remotely. It is worth considering this solution if we are inviting speakers from a distant part of the country or from abroad to our conference, and we are concerned that they may have trouble reaching the venue. An in-person conference with hybrid elements is also a great option for those speakers who cannot attend the event for health reasons. Keep in mind that the need to connect speakers remotely will require you to have extra people on your team to take care of the technical process!

Hybrid conference

In this variant, the organizer allows remote and onsite participation for both event speakers and participants. For a conference to be fully hybrid, remote participation must be based on similar principles as the in-person participation. This is why it is essential to choose a good event platform through which remote participants will connect, and to provide additional moderators who will animate not only the stationary participants, but also the online community of our event. It is certainly necessary to ensure that attendees' questions asked in chat are passed on to speakers during Q&A sessions. It's also a good idea to prepare engaging activities such as surveys, contests or speed networking sessions to be held during breaks.

Remote conference from the studio

In a remote conference broadcast from the studio, the stationary presence of speakers and presenters is required in the studio, meanwhile all participants connect at the event through the event platform. Since in this variant we do not have a stationary audience, we only need to take care of online moderators who will be the liaisons between the participants and the speakers in the studio. A variant of a remote conference with a studio can be an event, where we allow some of the speakers to connect remotely,  while the rest is in the studio. Remember, however, that such a decision should not be made at the last minute, as remote connection with the studio requires special tests with the speaker.

Remote conference

The last type of conference, where both participants and speakers connect remotely, and only the production team is in the studio to watch over the technicalities of the entire transmission.