Tips and ideas to help you maximize the value of interaction at your events.

Introduce interaction to your audience

Ensure your audience are confident using the interactive system by asking a simple ‘ice-breaker’ question before you begin your presentation.

Find out about your audience

Begin your presentation by asking your audience a series of demographic questions. This will enable you to compare audience feedback against criteria such as age, gender and region.

Example

• Step one:  Ask your audience a demographic question: Are you male or female?
• Step two:  Ask a general question: Which party will you vote for in the next general election?
• Step three:  Display the results to show how men and women in your audience intend to vote.

This will enable you to assess trends in how men and women vote.

The results from the general question can be compared against other demographic data, such as age and profession, enabling you to build detailed demographic profiles.

Gain open and honest feedback from your audience

Allowing the audience to submit their feedback anonymously will give them the confidence to express their true opinions, increasing the quality of your feedback data.

Focus audience attention

Re-focus audience attention every time you begin a new topic. This can be done in a number of ways:

• Find out how well the audience know the subject you are about to engage them in by asking a specific question about it.
• Find out if there is a difference in opinion amongst the audience.
• Ask the audience if they are aware of current trends or issues surrounding the subject.
• Find out what the audiences think about current and future changes surrounding the subject.
• Asking questions of this nature will keep the audience involved and engaged throughout the presentation.

Tip: Participants will find it interesting to know how their opinions compare to the rest of the audience. Enable participants to submit their responses anonymously to gain honest and accurate feedback.

Explain results

Always explain or comment on results and use them to highlight your point.

Tip: Results can be used to instantly assess audience knowledge levels. If it is clear that participants have not fully understood a subject, find out why and go over it again.

Listen to the audience

Some feedback results may need further explanation. Asking the audience to offer an objective explanation or their opinions will ensure they remain involved and engaged in the subject.

Tip: Use the in-built microphone on the Communicator to facilitate instant Q&A and avoid the need for roving microphones at your event.

Actively involve the audience

In cases where complex issues need to be prioritized, brainstorm the issues with your audience and ask them to prioritize each one on a scale (e.g, 1-10). Issues can then be prioritized against another set of prioritized criteria, for example; risk versus impact, opportunity versus cost, priority versus performance etc.

The results can then be displayed live to the audience on a scatter chart, enabling you to instantly identify and focus on the most crucial issues with your audience.

Measure knowledge retention

• Ask the audience questions about the subjects you have presented in order to measure how much information they have retained.
• Measure shifts in audience opinion.
• Ask your audience their opinions on a subject before and after a presentation to see if their opinions change.
• Gauge support levels.
• Ask the audience how confident they are about a new strategies and challenges.
• Make rapid and accurate decisions.
• Brainstorm and agree plans with your audience.
• Challenge your audience.
• Motivate your audience with an exciting and challenging quiz based on business and trivia questions.
• Quizzes are a fun way of communicating information to participants and will enhance learning and knowledge retention.

Tip:  Use speed scoring to display live results after every round. This will increase competition and create a lively and motivated atmosphere.

Break your audience into smaller groups

Promote teamwork by gathering feedback from groups brainstorming ideas outside of the main meeting room.

Download stored responses

Gather feedback from individual participants working outside of the main meeting room at their own pace. Their responses are stored in the memory of the Communicator keypads and can be downloaded at a later time.

Tip:  During the morning session of your event - send individual participants outside of the main meeting room to answer questions. Download their responses from the Communicator during the lunch break and address/brainstorm them during the afternoon session.