MAD//Fest

In July 2021, MAD//Fest hosted 4,000 in-person attendees at London's Truman Brewery and another 4,000 tuned in virtually via Webex Events. The sophisticated virtual events platform allowed attendees from over 30 countries to network, engage, and experience the MAD//Fest magic, no matter how they attended.

"[The hybrid event] really took production to another level," said Brain. "We had to cater to the needs of in-person attendees and virtual attendees. That's where the Webex Events Platform enabled us to seamlessly join the conversation between in-person and online attendees, so people could meet remotely, they could tune into the content, they could interact with the content, and that was all through the Webex Events Platform."

The festival was such a success that it was named Best Hybrid Event at the 2021 UK Conference Awards.

The MAD//Fest team wanted to give all attendees a great networking experience, regardless of whether they were joining in-person or virtually. They leveraged several Webex Events features to make sure both virtual and in-person attendees had opportunities to connect for true hybrid engagement. For example, all attendees could interact through the Wall feature, posting pictures of their event experience and liking and commenting on each other's posts. The selfie booth was also accessible to both in-person and virtual attendees. People could easily snap a selfie of themselves from their phone or desktop, allowing everyone to put a face to a name.

In total, attendees made over 20,000 connections during the event. One virtual attendee shared a particularly inspiring story:

"An attendee from Uruguay obviously couldn't come to London for our event, so she jumped onto the Webex Events Web App," Houghton said. "She connected with lots of people and off the back of her experience on the web app, she was able to organize her own webinar for 100 potential clients in the UK. That is amazing ROI for one of our delegates."

To make sure both virtual and in-person attendees could experience the same sessions and keynote presentations, MAD//Fest leveraged Webex Events' RTMP Player, embedded directly in virtual attendees' agenda.

"It was important to us that the [virtual] delegates had exactly the same experience from a content perspective as the [in-person] delegates," Houghton said.

To boost sponsor ROI and ensure sponsors could engage with both virtual and in-person attendees, each sponsor at MAD//Fest had a dedicated sponsor room through Webex Events' Video Rooms feature, which enables 1:1 and small group networking.

Webex Events' hybrid sponsor features allowed MAD//Fest to retain key sponsorships even when partners couldn't attend in person. One large global sponsor wanted to attend on-site but couldn't due to their company's travel restrictions. However, with Webex Events' sponsorship capabilities, they were able to maintain their original sponsorship package and update their assets to be compatible in the virtual platform.

After the event, 82% of sponsors renewed their sponsorship for the upcoming year—clear evidence of the value MAD//Fest's hybrid event provided.