Engaging your event audience through real-time response technology

April 17, 2018

For anyone who has managed a meeting or provided a presentation to a group, mobile tech distraction is an increasingly common challenge that needs to be managed during a live meeting: ringing, texting, email checking, “tweeting”, “angry-birding”…how to keep your attendees engaged and focused among all these distractions?

The use of mobile phones, tablets and laptops at events has become so prevalent that event planners need to find effective solutions to incorporate them into daily practices and, moreover, turn them into engaging and learning tools.

Mobile Event technology has revolutionized the way organizers, attendees and event stakeholders interact with each other and participate in your event. This technology has provided a platform for everyone to be connected, engaged and part of the event process.

So where do we go from here?

The next step in utilising mobile technology in order to enhance your event is through (LIVE) audience response. Make your sessions more interactive by connecting with those just sitting in the audience and create pathways for speakers, panellists, and moderators to interact and exchange with your event attendees.

Here’s a brief overview of how Live Polling Features can enhance your event.

LIVE Questions
Extracting questions from your audience right now is often an expensive exercise or a major technological challenge. You have to setup microphones, have the attendees wait in line; allocate time slots all which often disrupt the flow of your sessions. In addition, there is no way for moderators or speakers to review the questions ahead of time and separate those that are inappropriate or not relevant. Twitter has become the polling medium of choice at a lot of events mainly due to the buzz surrounding this technology. The downside is that Twitter is in the public domain and it is often difficult for session chairs or moderators to filter the good from the bad questions.

With Live Questions, your audience uses their mobile devices to submit questions during your sessions. Audience members can view submitted questions, ‘like’ their favorites and add their own comments to each question. Through this your speakers can easily view and prioritise the important questions and can tailor their responses accordingly.

LIVE Polling
With Live Questions, the audience can submit their questions for discussion, but what about when a speaker wants to ask a question of the audience?

With Live Polling, speakers and moderators can gather feedback from attendees in real-time. They can create a simple poll, instantly share it with their audience, set a timer, and gather tabulated results as they are submitted. This feature is particularly beneficial during business events and corporate meetings when voting and decision making is required. You can simply input your question, limit each user to a single vote and securely get results.

For Moderators and Speakers
For speakers, moderators and event planners the benefits offered and information collected through LIVE Questions and LIVE Polling can be a godsend, but only if they are easy to manage. Systems like EventEdge Live give speakers and moderators an easy to use back-end that provides them with a platform to easily manage every question and the poll. All of the questions are automatically collected and organized by most popular. Through this admin portal you can access and delete questions that are inappropriate, hide questions, mark them as answered and view all submitted comments. For polls, you can create, view, and export results before during, and after each session or the entire event. With services like EventEdge Live, moderators can use a customized projector mode to display the questions to entire audience that updates automatically and keeps everyone on the same page.

Tech savvy event managers are already utilizing social media, event apps, collaborative networks, discussion groups, branded channels, web casting, digital posters, live streaming, hybrid and virtual technology at their events. These tools are relatively new in terms of the event industry but are evolving at a rapid pace and are quickly becoming an expectation for future event participants.

With all of these technologies in place it constantly amazes me that the number one question I am still asked it ‘Does any of this technology have LIVE polling and audience response’?
Well it does now and you will see a lot more event technology supporting LIVE polling as venue driven internet connectivity issues are resolved.

Darren Edwards
Invisage Creative Services
www.invisage.net