One big indicator of growing interest in hybrid meetings is the recent announcement that PCMA’s next Annual Meeting will be co-located with the Virtual Edge Summit, a two-day event filled with sessions and workshops pertaining to virtual meeting education.

PCMA’s Annual Meeting will be held Jan. 9-11, 2011, followed by the Virtual Edge Summit on Jan. 12-13.  Both will take place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

“We at PCMA believe that virtual meetings are not only the wave of the future, but excellent complements to face-to-face meetings,” commented PCMA President and CEO Deborah Sexton when making the announcement.

According to Michael Doyle, executive director of the Virtual Edge Institute, which produces the Virtual Edge Summit, the event will “have a comprehensive education program that deals with issues around planning, funding, marketing, content development, event production and, of course, measurement. Our sponsors are also on hand to offer hands-on demos and talk about services available to assist with production.”

Sessions at Virtual Edge will include: Planning and Funding Your Virtual Event Experience, Using Virtual to Grow Your Physical Events, Measuring the Effectiveness of Virtual Events, Going Hybrid – It’s Not as Hard (Or Costly) As You Think, Building Your Digital Events Playbook and Integrating Your Core Event Applications and Vendors.