You have a date, a speaker and a rough idea of what people will get out of showing up. Now you need to decide whether to run the event in person, online or both at once. The choice is not about following trends or what other organisers are doing. It is about who you want in the room, what kind of interaction matters and what you can actually manage on the day.
In person when you need people to meet each other
An in-person event makes sense when the real value is in the conversations that happen before the session starts, during the break or after the last question. A workshop where participants pair up to solve a problem. A product launch where people need to see the thing with their own hands. A meetup where half the point is putting faces to usernames.
You also choose in person when the setting itself matters. A gallery opening needs the art on the walls. A tasting needs the food. A bitcoin meetup in a café that accepts Lightning creates a different atmosphere than a video call ever could.
The trade-off is reach. You lose everyone who cannot get to the venue, whether that is because of distance, cost, childcare or a dozen other reasons. You also take on logistics: finding a space, checking the projector works, making sure there are enough chairs. If twenty people register and five show up, the room feels empty. If fifty show up and you planned for twenty, someone is standing in the corridor.
Online when geography should not matter
An online event removes the barrier of location. Someone in Nairobi can join a session hosted in Lisbon without booking a flight. A parent can tune in after putting the kids to bed. A student without travel money can still ask a question.
This format works well for talks, panels, demonstrations and Q&A sessions where the content is the main draw. It also works when you want to record the session and share it later, because the setup is simpler and the audio is cleaner.
The difficulty is keeping attention. People have other tabs open. They join five minutes late or drop off early. The chat box can feel like shouting into a void, especially if there are more than a dozen attendees and no one is actively moderating. You also need everyone to have a stable connection and a basic grasp of the software, which is not always a given.
Another consideration: time zones. If your audience is spread across continents, someone will be joining at an awkward hour. You can rotate the schedule or record everything, but neither option is perfect.
Hybrid when you want both and can handle the extra work
A hybrid event tries to serve two audiences at once: the people in the room and the people watching from home. It sounds like the best of both worlds, but it usually means double the work and a higher chance that something goes wrong.
You need a camera that shows the speaker clearly, microphones that pick up questions from the floor, a screen so the in-person crowd can see remote participants and someone who is not the speaker to manage the tech. You also need to make sure the online audience does not feel like an afterthought. If all the interesting conversation happens in person and the remote attendees only get to watch in silence, you have not really created a hybrid event. You have just livestreamed a private gathering.
Hybrid works when the content is structured and you have a second person helping. A workshop where the exercises happen in breakout rooms online and at tables in the venue. A panel where some guests dial in and others sit on stage. A community call where regulars join from wherever they are and newcomers get to visit the space for the first time.
The example worth looking at is a crypto meetup that runs monthly in the same city. Most months it is in person, but when a speaker cannot travel or when organisers want to include someone from another region, they add a video link and a moderator to read out questions from the chat. That hybrid session happens once or twice a year, not every time, because it takes more effort and the format does not suit every topic.
Picking the format before you pick the platform
The format you choose should come before the tools you use. If you are running an in-person event and want people to pay with bitcoin, you need a way to issue tickets, send confirmations and check people in at the door without a spreadsheet and a printed list. Anyza Events handles that: tickets paid in crypto, delivered to the buyer's email, checked with a QR code and money sent straight to your wallet.
If you are running online, you need a video platform and a way to send the link only to people who registered or paid. If you are running hybrid, you need both and a plan for how they connect.
The worst outcome is choosing hybrid because it sounds inclusive and then discovering on the day that the remote participants cannot hear the questions, the in-person crowd cannot see the slides and you are too busy troubleshooting to actually host.
One format per event, not one format forever
You do not need to commit to a single approach for everything you organise. An annual conference might be in person because that is when people expect to travel and network. A monthly Q&A might be online because it is easier to sustain. A one-off workshop with a guest from another country might be hybrid because it is the only way to make it work.
The format should match the goal. If the goal is to bring a local community together, meet in person. If the goal is to share knowledge with as many people as possible, go online. If the goal is to connect two groups that would not otherwise overlap, hybrid might be worth the effort.
Start with one format, see how it goes and adjust next time. The format is a tool, not a philosophy.
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