Reflecting on Hybrid Events: Learning from a Year of Hybrid Experiences

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a sudden shift to virtual work and events, with the last two years enabling an appropriated and rather simulated togetherness - the hybrid mode. As we return to in-person events, it is important to reflect on not only what we learned about technologies and social justice, but about the types of events we desire, and how to re-design them accordingly. This SIG aims to reflect on hybrid events and their execution: scaling them across sectors, communities, and industries;considering trade-offs when choosing technologies;studying best practices and defining measures of "success"for hybrid events;and finally, identifying and charting the wider social, ethical, and legal implications of hybrid formats. This SIG will consolidate these topics by inviting participants to collaboratively reflect on previous hybrid experiences and what can be learned from them. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Philanthropic conference-based requirements engineering in time of pandemic and beyond.

As software engineering (SE) practitioners, we can help society by using our communities of experts to address a software need of a socially conscious organization. Doing so can benefit society in the locale of a SE conference and provide access to international experts for local organizations. Furthermore, established SE researchers as well as practitioners and students have the opportunity for a unique learning experience. While the SE community has already realized the importance of addressing human values and promoting social good objectives in software development, we are unaware of previous attempts to leverage SE conferences for this activity. Conferences present an opportunity to enjoy the assembly of SE practitioners, researchers, and students for the purpose of a philanthropic endeavor. Over the past four years of running a "Requirements Engineering for Social Good" event called RE Cares, co-located with the International Conference on Requirements Engineering, we worked with the stakeholders local to the conference venue. We selected stakeholders who would not necessarily have ready access to requirements engineering, software design, and development expertise otherwise, to build software targeting "good causes." In the last two years, this event was altered to adapt to the constraints induced by COVID-19, moving to a hybrid mode and changing many of its practices accordingly. This paper summarizes and generalizes our experiences, discussing our lessons learned in the context of the pandemic and beyond and providing a framework for conducting similar social contribution in any SE conferences in general.

Disruption in times of COVID-19? The hybrid film festival format

The first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic had unprecedented implications for cultural sectors. With film festivals, music concerts and other cultural events being postponed or even cancelled, there was an urgency to respond to changing circumstances. Cultural events increasingly relied on hybrid or online formats to remain accessible for audiences. Because such formats caused controversy about programming and release strategies, they were easily conceived of as having a disruptive impact on cultural sectors. This paper puts such assumptions about disruption into question. It focuses on the film festival sector, which is increasingly invested in strategies of online accessibility and audience reach. The research is specifically based on the hybrid festival format. Drawing on case studies of hybrid film festivals such as London, Ghent and Rotterdam, it argues that their strategies and operations should be understood from the perspective of cultural change rather than disruption. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Examining Participant’s Perception of SPICE Factors of Metaverse MICE and Its Impact on Participant’s Loyalty and Behavioral Intentions

The COVID-19 pandemic has made most MICE (an acronym that stands for Meeting, Incentive travel, Convention and Exhibition) events postponed or canceled but some are held as online and virtual, or as hybrid events combining online and offline format. In recent years, evolved from the physical MICE events, metaverse-based MICE events are spot-lighted as the participants can indirectly participates in the virtual world called metaverse through avatars, the virtual self. As various metaverse contents are developed based on advanced technology, the MZ (millennials and Generation Z) generation, who proficiently handle digital platforms, accepts the virtual world as a part of reality, and enjoys new experiences (Hwang, Media Issue Trend 45:6–15, [3]). The purpose of this study is to investigate which factors of the metaverse-based MICE events affect the participants’ loyalty and intention to attend the MICE events and provide empirical data for establishing an effective metaverse-based MICE marketing strategy. To do that this study adopted SPICE(Seamlessness, Presence, Interoperability, Concurrence, Economy) model of metaverse suggested by Kim and Shin (S.K. Kim, B.H. Shin, Metaverse new opportunity. Vegabooks (2021)). A total of valid responses collected from MICE industry stakeholders were investigated. The findings of this study identified that among five dimensions of SPICE model, Seamlessness, Presence, and Economy factors have statistically significant influence on participants’ loyalty of the event while only Presence and Economy factors have significant influence on intention to attend the event. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Exploring the Use of Virtual and Hybrid Events for MICE Sector Resilience: The Case of South Africa

This study departs from the premise that COVID-19 has fast-tracked the transition to the virtual environment in the global meetings, incentives, conference/convention, and exhibition (MICE) events sector. Using South Africa as a case study, the research explores the use of virtual and hybrid events in enhancing the resilience of MICE events. Adopting a mixed methods approach, data was collected from 19 purposively selected MICE tourism stakeholders (involved in the planning and organizing of the MICE sector) as well as 500 MICE event attendees. The findings reveal that virtual and hybrid MICE events ensured the business continuity of the MICE sector during COVID-19. Additionally, these events were found to be essential for information sharing and proved valuable in times of uncertainty. The study further found that these events provided substantial market opportunities for MICE stakeholders in the country. However, the study uncovered that certain sub-sector of MICE, as well as some key functions, cannot be easily replicated in the virtual space. Moreover, several challenges surfaced when hosting such events, including the matter of internet connectivity and the significant capital investments required for their execution. Overall, the study concludes that virtual events have emerged as a valuable tool for enhancing the resilience of MICE events to crises, and hybrid events are postulated to become a prominent feature in MICE events offerings in the future. © 2022 AJHTL /Author(s) ;Open Access – Online @ www.ajhtl.com

The Changing Nature of The Mice Sector in South Africa Due to Covid-19

The purpose of the study is to explore the changing nature of MICE tourism in South Africa due to COVID-19. Based on a series of interviews conducted with representatives of the MICE industry in various sectors, including incentive, conference, and meeting, venues, and associations, the study found that while the shift to virtual events was adopted by many, there are substantial costs involved and significant learning required for their successful execution. Further, the study found venues to be among the most affected owing to the restrictions placed on visitor numbers and the need to adapt to the virtual environment. Moreover, virtual events were perceived as temporary plasters, with live to return once restrictions on the industry are lifted. The study concludes that virtual and hybrid events are valuable in the continuity of MICE tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present research is one of the very few studies examining the impact of COVID-19 on MICE events and reveals the subsequent changes, in theory and practice, to MICE tourism. © 2022 Cognizant, LLC.