It takes a team to run a meeting!
Staffing Your Next Meeting (Event)
Your Hybrid Meeting Support Team – Roles & Definitions
This page is a vocabulary lesson to define who does what in a meeting. It identifies the various “hats” people have to wear in a meeting. Large organizations can have one person per job title. In smaller organizations, one person may have to shoulder several of these responsibilities!
Meeting
- Leader
- Speaker
- Instructor
- Messenger
- Presenter
Audience Identities
- In-room Audience
- Online Audience
Support
- Facilitator
- Host
- MC (Master of Ceremonies)
- Admin
- Tech
- New: Event Technologist
Where do you fit? (We fit in the support column.)
Leadership
This is the individual who can – and does – call the meeting by saying “I want to have a meeting.”
Leadership also has a vision of how to define whether the meeting is successful. They say “This is what I expect when it’s over.”
Finally, “Leadership” may take a sit-back-and-watch hands-off approach.
AKA the “Leader“
Presenter(s)
This may be the Leader (as in “Leadership”) who wants to express the message of the meeting.
Or, the Presenter may be a subject matter expert. Their talk covers a
“Speaker“
“Presenter“
“Instructor“
“Messenger“
Audiences | Participants
Leadership has a message and the “audience” is who the message is for.
Hybrid meetings are intended to be interactive. where the participants can exchange ideas and questions.
A Hybrid meeting is actually two meetings at once.
The “In-Room Audience“
The world is slowly returning to in-person meetings.
This often involves rows of chairs. If the participants are lucky then a table is provided.
Comfort is considered, but not paramount.
The “Online Audience“
On one hand, this is the most frustrating place to be. Participants lack the ability to walk up and tap someone on the shoulder for a one-on-one talk. Participants can also miss out on any goodies in the room, such as refreshments.
On the other hand, this is the most convenient way to attend the meeting. There is no travel involved. They only have to dress from the waist up.
Support
It takes a team to run a meeting. I have identified two support roles.
One is focused on the In-Room audience, and the other’s responsibility is on the Online audience.
Meeting Support
One person needs to focus on the mechanics of the meeting. Their job is to see that the meeting runs smoothly.
For example, one objective is to avoid “proximity bias” where the people in the room seem to have priority over the people online.
“Facilitator“
Facilitators are the new entertainers!
“MC (Master of Ceremonies)“
“Host“
This name, however, is easily confused with the title “host” used by Zoom to describe their primary tech/admin person.
Technical Support
For hybrid meetings, one person should be tagged to handle the technical side of the meeting.
Their focus is to make the technology invisible and easy to use by the facilitator and presenter.