Here in Cincinnati our team at the Duke Energy Center is ready to work with you in new and different ways. We have planned a clean, safe and healthy environment for you to return to, yet we are looking towards the future. We have collaborated with our downtown partners as well as our in house service partners to bring you a fun and engaging hybrid meeting experience for you today. My name is Joyce Leveston. I am the senior vice president of convention centers at Spectra venue management and I am really excited to share with you a new opportunity today. So I will welcome you to sit back, relax, as we come together again. Joyce has such great perspective. Another great example of a Cincinnati native that is having a huge impact on our industry. Her position with Spectra venue management allows her to influence the culture of so many people at dozens of venues nationally. You know I remember last year when I first started telling people that Joyce was associated with Cincinnati and the Duke Energy Convention Center; words by client focused, problem solver, personable, energetic were used over and over to describe Joyce. I'm proud of Joyce and her commitment to excellence, and proud to have another strong female, and importantly a friend, supporting this industry. I'm Julie Calvert, president and CEO of the Cincinnati USA Convention & Visitors Bureau. We are glad to be supporting the events industry and Cincinnati in this changing climate. We have so many facilities around Cincinnati open and ready to support events with your health and safety in mind. This hybrid event is a small example of a Cincinnati support package for associations and conventions. We have many great partnerships across facilities to make large groups feel right at home. Thank you for joining us. Cincinnati is meeting. Let's get this event started at the Duke Energy convention center with Linda Jensen and Justin Markle. A hybrid event is a meeting or conference, or a convention, that is happening in real time in many places. the DCCC will host your event and your attendees can choose to be attending the event in Cincinnati, with all the best accommodations for a healthy experience, or with their peers in an off-site experience which will enhance sharing and communal ideas to grow. We think of together with a new perspective with all the tools and technology that we all use now everyday. the one consistent factor throughout this entire pandemic that we heard was what does a hybrid event look like? well that's what we're here to do today; is show you exactly what a hybrid event looks like, the platform were utilizing, and special thanks to our partners with Prestige Audio Visual and creative services for their hosting of this virtual event, we are so thankful for their support and the platform will allow you to ask questions live in real time. we've got a staff from the convention center, from our hotel Partners, from our CVB here in Cincinnati, that will be responding to you live. And so, as we enter this journey, we are excited to share with you what we're hosting, not just in the future but we're prepared and hosting right now in Cincinnati. Come with us on this journey. Thanks for joining us. let's begin. Welcome to the Grand Ballroom at the Duke Energy Convention Center coming to you Live from Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you to those joining us safely in person, and equally, thank you for those joining us virtually. I am Linda Jensen, co-host for today’s Hybrid Event. We are all wearing masks today to ensure all participants, including guests and staff are safe. As your safely physically distanced hosts, and so that we can better communicate, we will shed masks just for today’s Main Stage. I will be joined shortly by my co-host who we just heard from, Justin Markle, the journeyman himself, who is making his way to the stage from our Café and that last shot. Whew…are we on? Yes. Live. Right there. (Pointing) Great. Perfect timing. That would have been a hike if I had to hoof-it. Truth be told. The previous shot was pre-recorded and edited, and I was backstage with my feet up until about 20 seconds ago. Combining the magic of creative, often impromptu moments of live events with pre-recorded and edited video can allow you to keep audiences engaged, even those experiencing virtual meeting fatigue. This is one of the benefits of a Hybrid Event model. Hold up there. Before we get going, let’s tackle some brief housekeeping. For those joining us Live, we have physically distanced all seating including the networking area and bar, the breakout vignettes and the theater seating you see today. Please feel free to use one of the safe and clean computer stations to enjoy this session. For the few hundred joining us virtually from home, please find the chat feature on the right of your screen. Now, back-to-business, we have three concepts that we hope that you leave here with today: Hybrid Events are an option for those with some attendees wishing to safely attend a Face-2-Face event and some attendees wishing to attend Virtually. It is possible to accomplish this within the same event. You will see here today one option to go Hybrid. Some have asked, why would you do this? Does that not displace future live events? In the long-term, the current Virtual environment is not anywhere near profitable enough to replace Face-2-Face events. But, you don’t have to take my word for it. We’ve included an attachment and data from the latest study by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) that you can see and click on just below this window. Second, you have a partner in the Spectra venue management team at the Center who can help along the way. For your reference, we’ve also included an attachment of this Room Set-up diagram. This is one example of how we can bring Virtual and Live events together to help you reach your maximum audience during this time. And, for more information on room set-ups, please be sure to stick around for the Event Planning Breakout with Lia Smith after this Main Stage program. This will be one of 9 Breakout sessions coming to you Live and where you can get into more detailed specifics for each topic. Third, but not last, we hope that we can provide this insight while also offering a little fun and entertainment along the way. Our team at the Center enjoyed the opportunity to pull this together for you! That’s right, and to kickoff the fun. Our sponsors from Prestige AV & Creative Services and Spectra Venue Management, who combined their creative minds to design and produce today’s event, have graciously donated $50 gift cards for us to giveaway in appreciation for your participation today. So…for the first giveaway, a $50 Visa Gift Card goes to the first person that posted in the Main Stage chat. Congratulations to J Hill which I believe is Janet Hil. Congratulations. We will have this coming your way so be looking for an email. An email from Michelle Hopewell which will be coming your way today to claim your prize. And, of course, we have prizes for our Live attendees. And, the next Giveaway from our sponsors is a $100 gift card to the world-famous Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse for the first in-person guest to find Paul Ramstetter, producer of today’s event with Prestige AV, and mention the secret password ‘Hybrid Event’. Ok, now that the fun has started, we have a quick message from Tony Ramstetter and the Event production professionals at Prestige AV & Creative Services to hear about Prestige and how they can help you create your next Hybrid event. Hi I’m Tony Ramstetter, founder and president of Prestige AV and creative Services. I'm excited to welcome you to this hybrid event which we are hosting with our hometown partners in Cincinnati. I'm speaking to you from one of our studio spaces here at our corporate office in Bond Hll. one of our great neighborhoods in the city of cincinnati. I'm glad you're here, in person or online. Prestige established a hospitality based customer service model that has helped us foster client relationships with clients and venues in Cincinnati, regionally and nationally.Our history of technical support and strong relationships is the Cornerstone of The Prestige way and I'm proud to be a part of supporting so many great events and great causes across the region. Cincinnati is meeting and Prestige has been supporting clients as they try to figure out what their next event looks like. maybe this event can spark some ideas for you. we have a full staff ready to help and advance that conversation. Just visit a Prestige breakout after the event for a live conversation. with that I'm going to throw it over to the duke energy convention center studio. hey Paul how's it going over there? Tony it's going well here. I'm standing in the studio here at the Duke Energy Convention Center if I do really located in a service quarter between the Junior Grand Ballroom it's a perfect location to support live events on site and allow us to broadcast anywhere we can record messages here and there pants or we can broadcast live as well so let's go ahead and take a quick walk out of the studio go ahead and put my mask on we're going to take a quick walk out of the studio and over to the Grand Ballroom to show you the proximity of how close this is I am stepping into the back of the Grand Ballroom here one of the things about this set up for this hybrid event is that we have all the breakouts for you to see but these breakouts could just as easily be at the Hyatt where the hell or another room here in the building so did I do all right Justin Paul you're doing great but I have to ask an on-site studio and N room broadcasting bears that can also be used live these are both very unique Concepts and I feel like our attorneys might have lots of questions about how these breakouts work and what is involved including cost how can I learn more so we actually have three separate breakouts running simultaneously at the end of the program one is for planners to have a little fun we have another one explaining some of the new technologies for social distancing as well as our policies and procedures if anyone's interested in that and then I will be leaving a breakout talking about hybrid event options and whether or not you can afford to have one I'll be definitely be going through different features and price points so come join us after the event thank you Paul and thank you press to use for that great insight into breakouts and how the remote connect As we look ahead and how we will be caring for one another, here at the Center we are in the process of becoming GBAC-STAR certified. We believe the GBAC-STAR certification will be the gold standard for creating a safe and clean environment. If you have specific questions about the steps that the Center is taking, and how your event can communicate the Center’s GBAC-STAR certification, please join our team for the Safety First: Cleanliness Protocols after this Main Stage. We also have our hotel partners joining us today from the two co-headquarter hotels, the Hyatt Regency Cincinnati and the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza, both located adjacent to the Duke Energy Convention Center. Please join us now for a message from the Hyatt Regency Cincinnati. Hello, my name is Lauren Miguez, Director of Sales and Marketing for the Hyatt Regency Cincinnati, and thank you for coming today to tour our hotel. First I just wanted to say thank you and welcome you to our hotel. And of course, I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy. As we work through the COVID transition and coming back to meetings, I wanted to share with you a little bit about what our hotel is doing in preparation for you. As you enter the hotel, you’ll notice there’s contactless doors, so you’ll come through the doors and naturally progress into a beautiful, open, clean lobby. Everything in our hotel has been newly renovated. New beds, new linens, new pillows, new terry. So you will find that our cleanliness program that we have partnered with EcoLab to be right on point. What we’re doing is we’re making sure that there is no contact between you and our housekeepers during your stay, unless you want us to be in that room. It’s important to know that we care about people so they can be their best. It’s also important to us to let you know that our staff is going to be properly masked, we’re going to be wearing our masks, we have lots of hand sanitizers throughout the lobby and our meeting space. So everything that we do is about caring for our guests and caring for our team. And our team also will have daily health checks and temp checks to ensure they are healthy to serve you. As you get to experience our hotel and the meeting space, we actually have the largest hotel ballroom in downtown Cincinnati at 14,000 sq ft. It’s quite nice and it stretches out to 40,000 sq ft of meeting space that is flexible, easy and again, open and able to socially distance how you need it to be so that you can feel confident in your meeting. We also have The Market, which is a grab and go environment that is fantastic. You can get your Starbucks, you can get packaged food, wine, sandwiches, fresh salads, all here at The Market. And right now I’m sitting in the Library, where you can actually come and you can socially distance, you can plug in your phone, you can plug in your laptop. It is a great place to sit, have a coffee, relax before your busy day ahead. Again, thank you so much for taking the time to see us here at the Hyatt Regency Cincinnati. We miss you very much and we look forward to having you back. Again, take care. Thank you to Lauren and our partners at the Hyatt Regency Cincinnati. Lauren is here with us and will be leading a Caring for your Community Q&A Breakout immediately following this Main Stage. Back to more fun. The next Prize drawing from our sponsors is a $200 gift card to the world-famous Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse. To be fair to those joining in-person, we have taken the liberty to enter one drawing for each on-site registrant, and will draw a name. Linda, will you do the honors? Congratulations ______. You can claim your prize at the Prestige AV production tables. And, not to leave out our Virtual guests, the first person to answer this question in the chat in the bottom right corner will win a $50 gift card. As we hope for baseball in the coming weeks, “What is the City and Team Name of the first professional baseball team?” And, while you contemplate and respond, and especially for many of you that may not be familiar with the Cincinnati convention package, here is a message from one of our two co-headquarter hotels, the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza. Welcome to the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza Hotel. My name is Bob Louis and I am the Director of Sales and Marketing. Our property is 561 guest rooms, including 71 suites. The hotel completed a guest room refresh in March of this year. Some of the new features are new carpeting, wall coverings and the new Serta NXT tempacted memory foam gel mattress. The hotel also has 2 restaurants, including Ohio’s only 5-Diamond restaurant, and the bar at the Palm Court, which offers live music 6 nights a week and is perfect for networking. As one of the two designated co-headquarter hotels for the Duke Energy Convention Center, the Hilton is a perfect partner with tthe Hyatt for hotel accommodations. The Hyatt was built in the 1980’s and offers a contemporary feel, the Hilton was built in 1931 and is one of the world’s finest examples of french, art-deco architecture in existence; so our property is a historic option for your attendees. The Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza is ideally located a short 200 steps, door to door from the Duke Energy Convention Center and connected by skywalk to the Hyatt Cincinnati. In fact, from our Salon A Boardroom, you can see the Hyatt - the red brick building, and the Duke Energy Convention Center with its distinctive pyramid. On the opposite side of the Hilton is Fountain Square, the City’s vibrant entertainment hub. There are over 90 restaurants and bars within a 5 block radius of our convention center package. The Hilton Cincinnati has approximately 45,000 sq ft of event space, all of which is unique and incorporates the hotel’s breathtaking french art-deco design. Our 3 ballrooms are perfect for offsite events and include the Hall of Mirrors, modeled after its namesake at the Palace of Versaille outside of Paris,France. The pavilion ballroom designed after the nightclub on the SS Leviathan and the Continental Ballroom which was the hotel’s original fine-dining restaurant. And our culinary and service teams are one of the best in the industry, having been selected a record 7 times, as Hilton Hotel’s #1 F&B hotel in the America’s. With the challenges we all face due to COVID-19, we understand that cleanliness is more important than ever. Hilton Hotels has partnered with the world famous renown Mayo Clinic and Lysol to create a new standard for room and event space cleanliness….Clean Stay and Event Ready. These new programs ensure that the highest standards of cleanliness are in place for your guest room, public space and your event space. You can learn more about the Hilton Netherland Plaza Hotel in our breakout session later in this program. Thanks to our partners at the Hilton. Bob Louis is here with us and will be leading a Clean Stay and Event Ready Q&A immediately following this Main Stage. We are very fortunate to have two great headquarter hotel options here in Cincinnati. Now, let’s peek behind the curtain to hear from the team at the Center, who will be available after the Main Stage for Breakouts. Peter…take it away. Oh, hi there, how are you? Uh, I’m Peter Barton, your sales manager. And you’re probably wondering, where am I? Welp, I’m under the “T”. It’s the Cincinnati icon sign that’s on the side of our world class facility here in downtown Cincinnati. And I'm here to tell you, and answer you a couple of questions for our service providers. What are they and what are they doing? Well, first of all our food and beverage service is phenomenal - top notch! We have a chef who will customize 100% of your menus, no more of that choking down on the rubber chicken stuff. Our internet service here is guaranteed, so that means you get what you want and pay for what you need. And then, our awesome providers for a b who are bringing you this awesome show. I'd like to pass it over now to Lia Smith our Director of Events The Duke Energy Convention Center can create an experience. We really can do this. If you tell me your idea, your dream, I know we can make it happen. We hope to see most of your guests at the center, your customers, your friends and family; safely, and with a warm and fun experience. But we also know that right now to attend online from their homes and offices and we want to welcome them too. We want to make them part of the experience from their location and make it real, make it a positive interactive experience that they will enjoy and remember in a good way. We are currently handling social distancing by strictly adhering to the CDC and local guidelines regarding social distancing. So as you can see in the example behind me, this is an example of a socially distanced theater seating, there is 6’ on either side and 6’ front to back. If you’re interested in learning more of what we’re doing to practice safe social distancing, and how we can help you set up your event, please join me in the breakout later. One of the great social experiences is dining and enjoying new foods. If some guests are virtual during the Social Hour, our Chef will entertain the guests with “how to make the cocktails”, “ how to plate a tray of exceptional bites”. “What goes into a culinary experience at home, or a public setting?” This can all be accomplished by a pre-planned invitation to join the event with a few items. Here's some of the items, Chef can share with your members. One of the challenges of the virtual experience is how to tie it all together. You may have remote attendees, you may have groups in offices, and you may have multiple presenters that all need to come together, seamlessly, to keep your attendees engaged and activated. Our partners are here to show you how easily this can be achieved. We have breakout rooms to visit for more in-depth information and discussion. We would love to interact with your teams, or individuals, to discuss specific ideas or thoughts you might have on this concept, and how it could work for your needs. Oh hi again, how are you? Guess where I am? yep, I'm with another T., that’s a joke from earlier. I just wanted to let you know while you've been at home, you know building calluses, we've been here doing some building of our own. We've upgraded and renovated our new Cafe Cincinnati; offering you and your attendees teas and coffees and pastries from our own pastry chef. You don't find that everywhere. Hmmm, coffee, good price too. What? Oh, apparently it's locally roasted here in Cincinnati. Okay, now, go on back to your regularly scheduled programming. Before we head to breakouts, we have one last Prize drawing from today’s sponsors. This is a big one. We have a $300 gift card to the world-famous Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse. Linda, will you do the honors? Congratulations to ______. You can claim your prize at the Prestige AV production tables. And, for our virtual attendees, we have another $50 Visa gift card to the first person to answer this question in the Main Stage chat. What Oscar-winning actor, who once played Batman, was born and raised in Greater Cincinnati? Well, now that everyone is excited. A final message and important message from Ric Booth, General Manager of Cincinnati’s Duke Energy Convention Center. Video 9 – Ric Booth video Thank you for this opportunity to bring a Hybrid event to you Live from Cincinnati’s Duke Energy Convention Center. As we wrap up this Main Stage, I want to again thank the partners and sponsors. Please reach out and let us be a part of your next event solution, whatever that may look like. Now more than ever and until we conquer this pandemic, which we will, we need to collaborate and work together. In that spirit, we hope that you will join us for one or more Breakouts for collaboration and deeper discussion. Thank you.