• by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, March 2, 2021

According to, Eventbrite, hybrid events are the hottest thing for 2021. So I started thinking, what would that possibly look like, as a planner or a participant?

The interesting thing about hybrid events is that they force us to really think about how we experience things. What process do we go through when we let the outside world in? What do we lose if we do that virtually? What do we gain, if anything? And, more importantly, how do we connect with other people during those experiences?

These are questions we didn’t think much about even a year ago. But today, in a reality that’s trying to straddle both the physical and virtual worlds, they are highly relevant to how we’ll live our lives in the future.

The Italian Cooking Lesson

First, let’s try a little thought experiment.

In our town, the local Italian Club -- in which both my wife and I are involved -- offered cooking lessons before we were all locked down. Groups of eight to 12 people would get together with an exuberant Italian chef in a large commercial kitchen, and together they would make an authentic dish like gnocchi or ravioli. There was a little vino, a little Italian culture and a lot of laughter. These classes were a tremendous hit.

That all ended last March. But we hope to we start thinking about offering them again late in 2021 or 2022. And, if we do, would it make sense to offer them as a “hybrid” event, where you can participate in person or pick up a box of preselected ingredients and follow along in your own kitchen?

As an event organizer, this would be tempting. You can still charge the full price for physical attendance where you’re restricted to 12 people, but you could create an additional revenue stream by introducing a virtual option that could involve as many people as possible. Even at a lower registration fee, it would still dramatically increase revenue at a relatively small incremental cost. It would be “molto” profitable.

But now consider this as an attendee.Would you sign up for a virtual event like that? If you had no other option to experience it, maybe. But what if you could actually be there in person? Then what? Would you feel relegated to a second-class experience by being isolated in your own kitchen, without many of the sensory benefits that go along with the physical experience?

The Psychology of Zoom Fatigue

When I thought about our cooking lesson example, I was feeling less than enthused. And I wondered why.

It turns out that there’s some actual brain science behind my digital ennui. In an article  in Psychiatric Times, Jena Lee, MD, takes us on a “Neuropsychological Exploration of Zoom Fatigue.”

A decade ago, I was writing a lot about how we balance risk and reward. I believe that a lot of our behaviors can be explained by how we calculate the dynamic tension between those two things. It turns out that it may also be at the root of how we feel about virtual events. Dr. Lee explains, “A core psychological component of fatigue is a rewards-costs trade-off that happens in our minds unconsciously. Basically, at every level of behavior, a trade-off is made between the likely rewards versus costs of engaging in a certain activity.”

Let’s take our Italian cooking class again. Let’s imagine we’re there in person. For our brain, this would hit all the right “reward” buttons that come with being physically “in the moment.” Subconsciously, our brains would reward us by releasing oxytocin and dopamine along with other “pleasure” neurochemicals that would make the experience highly enjoyable for us. The cost/reward calculation would be heavily weighted toward “reward.”

But that’s not the case with the virtual event. Yes, it might still be considered “rewarding,” but at an entirely different -- and lesser -- scale of the same “in-person” experience. In addition, we would have the additional costs of figuring out the technology required, logging into the lesson and trying to follow along. Our risk/reward calculator just might decide the tradeoffs required weren’t worth it.

Without me even knowing it, this was the calculation that was going on in my head that left me less than enthused.

 But there is a flip side to this.

Reducing the Risk Virtually

Last fall, a new study from Oracle in the U.K. was published with the headline, “82% of People Believe Robots Can Support Their Mental Health Better than Humans.”

Something about that just didn’t seem right to me. How could this be? Again, we had the choice between virtual and physical connection, and this time the odds were overwhelmingly in favor of the virtual option.

But when I thought about it in terms of risk and reward, it suddenly made sense. Talking about our own mental health is a high-risk activity. It’s sad to say, but opening up to your manager about job-related stress could get you a sympathetic ear, or it could get you fired. We are taking baby steps towards destigmatizing mental health issues, but we’re at the beginning of a very long journey.

In this case, the risk/reward calculation is flipped completely around. Virtual connections, which rely on limited bandwidth -- and therefore limited vulnerability on our part -- seem like a much lower risk alternative than pouring our hearts out in person. This is especially true if we can remain anonymous.

It’s All About Human Hardware

The idea of virtual/physical hybrids with expanded revenue streams will be very attractive to marketers and event organizers. There will be many jumping on this bandwagon. But, like all the new opportunities that technology brings us, it has to interface with a system that has been around for hundreds of thousands of years -- otherwise known as our brain.