Travel to conferences is increasingly seen as an unattainable luxury for many, with rising fuel prices and extremely long wait times for US travel visas… We hope to offer a flexible hybrid format that puts our virtual participants on equal footing with those on the ground in Houston.

Symposium was designed for professional and academic organizations to take their programming to the next level with the ease, access, and range of other benefits offered by virtual and hybrid events. This article outlines case highlights and best practices established by many organizations we work with to demonstrate how you can level up your events and programming.

They still interact with their audience - and judges! - through discussion rooms or chat functions, gaining experience in new forms of interaction that will be a part of academic and work cultures for the foreseeable future. We have been able to recruit judges for our events from literally all over the world, allowing experts in their fields and local community members to interact with and mentor our students. – Carole Krus

[T]his year we are offering a ‘hybrid’ option that is functionally two part: a digital Expo (featuring both poster presentations and oral presentations), an in-person Creative Arts Festival, and an in-person Research Expo Winner’s Circle featuring students who won awards during the digital Expo … We are projected to still save $3,000 from our pre-COVID format, while functionally offering more programming than we did prior to the pandemic. – Peter Civetta

Having the presentations available asynchronously via Symposium has provided me with more flexibility in my schedule to allow for a more structured learning process while developing the presentations and applying the knowledge to real-world datasets

Having the virtual aspect has provided the opportunity for us to showcase works with alumni, donors, key stakeholders, graduate school recruiters and family/friends of students. It has also offered greater flexibility and leaves us with a centralized repository of student work that provides great marketability.