Bridge the best of both worlds in your next hybrid event

Hosting any event requires a careful balance between managing technical needs and putting on a good show. Those duties can shift depending on whether your event is in-person or virtual. For hybrid events with complex technical production requirements, combining the audience’s virtual and in-person experiences is even more challenging.

Zoom offers a powerful app for our Zoom Sessions and Zoom Events customers called Tiles to help you deliver polished, professional-grade hybrid events that engage your audience and empower them to become active participants. Tiles is now generally available and included at no additional cost for current customers with a Zoom Events or Zoom Sessions license.

The premise of Tiles is simple: it displays your virtual Zoom audience in a customizable, professional-looking gallery that integrates seamlessly with in-person events and live streams. It’s all available in a simple macOS app that helps you create and export gallery canvases straight to production systems, along with powerful moderation controls. Customize to your heart’s content: borders, aspect ratios, shadows, transparency effects, and more. This level of detail ensures that virtual participants aren’t just present, but presented in a way that enhances the overall production value.

Let’s examine how three different event production agencies have used Tiles for Zoom to deliver engaging, immersive events.

The Teaching Studio specializes in transforming how educational content creators connect with their audiences through innovative video solutions. With four in-house studios, including their flagship seven-camera Interactive Studio, they produce both recorded courses and live interactive learning experiences on a regular basis. Their technology-enhanced space enables natural teaching movement and effortless virtual audience engagement.

Before implementing the Tiles for Zoom app, The Teaching Studio relied on a complex hardware setup based on multiple video switchers, combined with eight dedicated Zoom computers running separate gallery views. Since making the switch, they now run on a significantly consolidated setup to produce professional-quality outputs with expanded interactivity features.

Since 2020, The Teaching Studio has produced over 5.8 million viewer hours from their Interactive Studio on the Zoom platform alone. Their educational events have flourished. For example, a four-day interactive student orientation for UNC’s Kenan Flagler Master of Accounting program enabled remote learners to engage in highly interactive presentations. The Teaching Studio has also hosted multi-day sales training events and is preparing to launch a new live instructional series for Duke University’s Lifelong Learning Initiative. 

“The Zoom team really understands the unique demands of the live production industry and our desire to pioneer building the best interactive experiences for our clients. The tools—like Tiles—being brought to us by this team give us the ability to create next-level productions. The biggest thing for us is the ease and streamlining of technology within our control room workflow. On the technical side, Tiles has been a game changer for us,” says Jon Wakins, Co-CEO of The Teaching Studio.

Though their clients love the polish of their productions, The Teaching Studio said the real magic is their behind-the-scenes efficiency. As they continue to expand globally, The Teaching Studio credits their rapid growth and high customer retention rate largely to how they integrate virtual tools like Tiles and Zoom Events, which help them transform how educators create new learning experiences.

BC Live Productions delivers unforgettable events for local, national, and worldwide audiences. From corporate town halls to esports tournaments, massive arenas, and everything in between, BC Live specializes in hybrid events that create a real connection between in-person and virtual audiences. 

Prior to adopting Tiles, the team relied on a hardware-intensive setup involving multiple computers, multiview generators, and specialized control systems. While effective, this approach demanded significant resources and manual coordination, limiting flexibility as virtual participation scaled. By implementing a remote-first solution with Tiles, the BC Live team transformed the workflow—streamlining operations, minimizing on-site hardware, and enabling more dynamic, scalable audience engagement. Tiles for Zoom provides a simple solution for handling virtual audiences during hybrid events. Because the app is flexible and intuitive, the BC Live team can easily create and approve branded mockups, plan layouts, and prepare for on-site deployment. 

BC Live deployed its new Tiles-based solution for audience interaction during its television broadcast work for a major national convention in August of last year. They were hired to manage all remote transmissions for the event.

“The idea was a moment in the show, a way to connect people watching from around the country. The solution was very well received by the crowd, so much so that during the finale, the director not only called for it again, but ended the show with the Tiles collage stretched across the entire stage LED as confetti rained from the rafters,” says Alon Rogenstein, Producer for BC Live.

“Using Zoom and Tiles has allowed us to expand on our comprehensive virtual client services. By combining Zoom’s reliable, high-quality video platform with Tiles’ interactive features, we’ve been able to further stand out in the hybrid and virtual event space. This integration has not only helped us retain existing clients but also attract new ones, especially in the corporate and tech sectors, where the demand for engaging, seamless virtual events has skyrocketed,” adds Brett Collins, Founder and CEO of BC Live. 

From creating magical moments during high-profile broadcasts to expanding the possibilities of corporate events with interactive capabilities, Tiles for Zoom is continuing to help BC Live grow its business and delight its customers.

SociallyU is a virtual production studio based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that creates both pre-recorded video content and virtual live events for customers. The team at SociallyU implements cutting-edge technologies like 3D rendering engines, spatial camera tracking, and live green screen workflows to create immersive experiences and lifelike virtual sets from their studio. 

Zoom has become a key part of the SociallyU production pipeline over the past few years. For example, the team can bring in remote audio engineering experts over Zoom to guide mic placement and monitor the in-studio talent. In addition, clients bringing in remote guests can connect into the studio over Zoom thanks to SociallyU’s deployment of ZoomISO, which allows the production team to route high-quality individual participant feeds through their SDI-based video processing pipeline. SociallyU has also implemented Zoom Events to host virtual events for their customers. 

Tiles for Zoom has helped the SociallyU team take the next step in deepening the customization of their live virtual events. Shortly after Zoom’s announcement of Tiles last year, SociallyU began using the app’s gallery compositing features across their virtual events to create bespoke audience views that matched their clients’ brand style.

“When we heard about the launch of Tiles, it was obvious that we had to use it for all our virtual events. Its customization capabilities allows us to create on-brand looks for our clients, enhancing the visual appeal and immersiveness of our virtual events,” says André Dantzler, Founder & President of SociallyU. “The combination of Zoom and Tiles allows us to offer a unique value proposition in the virtual production space. Our clients and their audiences both feel the improvement, and our live event services have kept our clients coming back to us for their production needs.”

The SociallyU team recently collaborated with Forge Financial & Management Consulting on a full-day online training featuring live presenters and interactive sessions. Forge had done this training in-person before, but had never done it virtually. Their large in-studio displays running Tiles helped the presenters feel connected to the remote Zoom audience, which deepened the quality of their interactions.

“From the studio operations perspective, Tiles seamlessly integrates into our workflow, offering a solution that elevated our virtual and hybrid events beyond traditional formats,” adds Isaac Dantzler, Marketing and Technology Specialist at SociallyU. “It’s a really easy-to-use interface. Dialing it in for a client’s specifications is simple. The Tiles view is a big improvement for both the presenters and the audience. The presenters feel more immersed in their virtual set, with the Tiles view using the same brand colors as the virtual set we had created for Forge. We also gained more control over the audience view, as we could spotlight the Tiles feed whenever we wanted to show the audience to everyone in attendance.”

With Tiles now integrated as a core piece of SociallyU’s innovative production toolkit, the team looks forward to pushing the boundaries of video production with Zoom.

Customers using Tiles for Zoom have transformed the formerly daunting technical hurdles of hybrid events into opportunities to design highly engaging and interactive experiences for their audiences. Zoom’s dedication to efficient design and deep production tool integrations has enabled these positive outcomes for our customers. 

“Our key design goal for Tiles was reducing the amount of time it takes from having an idea for the design of your virtual Zoom audience to seeing it on screen so that you can quickly iterate and incorporate feedback,” says Andy Carluccio, Head of Client Innovation at Zoom, whose team created Tiles. “We were very excited to get to use Tiles ourselves on our own Zoomtopia event last fall and validate a lot of these ideas. Since then, our developers have been so delighted to see what customers have achieved with Tiles for their hybrid events, and we’re excited to continue partnering with our customers to deliver world-class broadcast experiences through Zoom.”

Tiles for Zoom is now available to Zoom Sessions and Zoom Events customers as part of Zoom’s Liminal App family of broadcast production tools. You can learn more about the app and access the download through the Liminal website.

The ways we connect, whether one-on-one or in arenas full of people, are still changing along with the technology we use. At Zoom, we aim to keep building new, easier ways for people to make those connections. The hardest part about getting together shouldn’t be the technology powering our events. We want to keep it simple so you can focus on what matters to you: your audience, your message, and your work.