In our previous blog article, we touched on our approach to hybrid events, based on successes and learnings across the past 36 months of executing international virtual & hybrid projects, at scale, for our broad spectrum of clients. In this article we are going to look to the future in which we ask the question, how will hybrid events and the Metaverse work?

Explaining the ecosystems

Let’s start with some definitions, which is quite hard to do but we must give it a go!

First, the Metaverse:

In chapter three of Matthew Ball’s pre-eminent book on The Metaverse which postulates that it will ‘revolutionise everything’ the Metaverse is defined as:

“A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual works that can experience synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users. These users will have an individual sense of presence and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.”

Quite a mouthful, unless you’re diving as deeply into Metaverse activity, as we are currently, the explanation may seem like a word salad… but outside of reading the aforementioned book (which I’d recommend), we will later touch on a few tactical examples to bring the explanation to life and hopefully show how simultaneously close and far we are from achieving the Metaverse.

Our core principles

Next, we have the Identity guiding philosophy for hybrid events which centres around a single organising principle, Better Together, where hybrid is designed into the core of an event from the beginning to create one unified experience.

This approach to hybrid events (being Better Together) is built on five core principles:

  • Entwined worlds: attendees receive experiences that are as close to identical as possible, irrespective of whether they’re online or in-person
  • Shared experiences: content, insight, and information flowing effortlessly between both worlds
  • A single platform: connecting in-person and virtual attendees in one inclusive experience
  • Woven content: everything from presentations to stage format is aligned to hybrid needs
  • One community: we prioritise every audience member to foster deeper human engagement

The similarities between hybrid events and the Metaverse, I hope you agree, are quite striking. The ambition is the same to create parity of experience between the physical and digital realms all with a view to manifesting connection between people, place, and purpose.

Pioneering your brand experience

Now with the housekeeping done, let’s look at how we can make this work for your brand, and it seems like a good time to recap why so many enterprises trust Identity to build pioneering events and experiences for them. Our primary success criteria for hybrid and Metaverse events are, unsurprisingly, identical to those of any event:

  • Inspire conversations and provide a forum for sharing information
  • Engage audiences through an experience that is both memorable and meaningful
  • Build human connections with attendees to learn, discover, question, network, and connect

So, let’s look at a recent example of an event within the Metaverse. We were challenged to create a solution that allowed 50 of the world’s top technology publications to experience Cisco global content in a future-focused environment that added to the innovative perception of the brand. The main Cisco Live in-person event was taking place in Las Vegas so a Metaverse experience was a natural progression for this inspirational enterprise event.

From invitation through to the earned media output – we immersed the journalists in a 3D real-time generated environment that included a live broadcast from Cisco leadership, avatar creation for the entire audience and a bespoke content gallery with product experts that could be engaged in a natural, conversational manner.

The technology allows the guests to ‘teleport’ between different spaces so they could have a more exploratory experience around the content, or they could simply watch the main address and cascade of information to get the facts and create their media articles.

Summing it all up

We believe the future of hybrid events and the Metaverse will have entwined destinies and that real-time 3D technological innovations will benefit from deep, experience-centric expertise and vice-versa. Every event in every medium is a deeper exploration into these hybrid and Metaverse endeavours – and we are fortunate enough to have pioneering, ambitious clients that challenge us to continually raise the bar. There’s a long was to go to achieve true interoperability, where events and delegates have true agency over their time, space, property, avatar, and experience within the Metaverse – but we’re excited to see where this road will take us and what innovations will pioneer the next iteration of the experience economy.

If you would like to talk about your brand’s event experience in this world, or the Metaverse, please get in touch by clicking here.