How to Present to a Hybrid Audience

 

Keeping your audience engaged during a presentation is always a challenge, but it’s even harder when some people aren’t in the room. What can you do to make your hybrid presentations more inclusive, energetic, and effective? Here are a few tips. Require cameras to be on. This will allow you to engage visually with everyone. To level the playing field even further, consider asking in-person participants to bring their laptops and turn their cameras on. Emotionally engage remote participants. Greet virtual participants personally at the beginning of the session and continue to address them throughout the presentation. Make direct eye contact. Begin by looking deliberately at the camera to send the message that the people not in the room are equally important. Throughout the presentation, switch back and forth between making eye contact with those in the room and returning your focus back to the remote participants. Foster collaboration. Have virtual and in-person participants work together, rather than splitting the group into in-person and remote breakout rooms.

This tip is adapted from “How to Nail a Hybrid Presentation,” by Sarah Gershman and Rae Ringel