This article shares one of the lessons I learned when planning and running a hybrid class reunion event in May 2022. Read the introduction and see the other lessons in this series here.
Lesson
If you have ever attended a conference or reunion, you know how many emails and messages you get from organizers. Each one seems to add new information about another aspect of the event. When you need to look up when a specific session starts or where to get the conference transportation it is a struggle because you have to search through so many emails and messages.
Our reunion was no different. The school sent out many emails, each with another piece of the overall agenda or details for the weekend. To make it easier for everyone I set up a class reunion website where we could consolidate all the relevant information and link to other sites as needed, such as the parking rules in town so we didn’t get tickets. It was easy for me to update during the weekend as well so it became the one place that everyone knew they could find the important information they needed.
We also had business cards printed with a QR code that people could scan on their smartphone to go directly to the site. All of us on the organizing group had a stack of cards that we made sure to give out to every classmate at the first event of the reunion. I saw people carrying and using the card to bring up the website on their phone throughout the weekend.
Feedback during and after the reunion showed how helpful people found this single source of information to be. Many people told me how they could focus on enjoying the event knowing there was one simple to access place to get the info they needed.
Hybrid meetings are more complex to organize than meetings of the past. A simple meeting invite in Outlook is not sufficient anymore. A hybrid meeting invite includes a room location for those on site, a meeting platform link for those attending remotely, a link to any facility guidelines, a link to check if there is space in the meeting room if there are capacity limits or restrictions in place, a link for national or regional restrictions that may be in place, and a reminder to check all of this multiple times before the actual meeting date since things can change at the last minute. Add on the need to provide access to backup documents or additional details that was provided in handouts at the meeting in the past. Asking meeting attendees to search through multiple emails or Slack messages to find all this information is too much.
Applying this lesson to your meetings
Set up one page/document with all the details
An Outlook meeting invite may not be enough for hybrid meetings anymore. The meeting requires many more details that may not be set up at the time the initial meeting invite is sent out. Consider setting up one document or page on SharePoint, Slack, or other messaging app that the group uses. Add this page to the meeting invite and direct everyone to that page for all details. Update that page with the meeting platform link and other details as listed above. Add links to pre-read documents and links to files with additional details. This page becomes the one-stop destination for the meeting attendees before and after the meeting.
Make the page easy to access
It is important that there is a quick and easy way for people to access this page. Provide a SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, or Google Docs link if it is a meeting with only internal participants. If the meeting includes people from different organizations and you are using a public web page, you can generate a QR code for the page in the Edge browser. Provide this QR code to people to make it easier to access information on their smartphone. Include the QR code on a slide at the start and end of the meeting so people can access the information at the time of the meeting. Drop the page link into the meeting chat at the start of the meeting so people can click on it to access the page.
Keep the page updated
Meeting invitations don’t have much value after the meeting is over. Your single source of information page will continue to have value after the meeting. Add a link to the meeting recording if that was done, add links to other documents that were requested during the meeting, and add answers to questions that were asked during the meeting. This one page becomes the place for those who could not attend the meeting live to go and access not just the slides but so much more that gives them a much better sense of the discussion that happened in the meeting. It also serves as a reference for when the topics discussed in the meeting next get addressed.
Wrapup
Meeting invitations of the past are not sufficient for today’s hybrid meetings. Set up a single place for all meeting information so those attending live and afterwards have the best experience possible.
Dave Paradi has over twenty-two years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written ten books and over 600 articles on the topic of effective presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. His focus is on helping corporate professionals visually communicate the messages in their data so they don’t overwhelm and confuse executives. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 4.8 million times and liked over 17,000 times on YouTube.