Hand-to-Hand Events

Social media is rapidly becoming an integral part of holding a meeting or special event. But that doesn't just mean setting up a Facebook Live page or picking a Twitter hashtag so everyone knows how to find fellow attendees' Tweets.

The point of social media, after all, is interaction. And while smartphones and Blackberrys are great tools for doing this on the road, when everyone is together in one venue, companies that provide dedicated handheld audience response devices offer the planners they work with a lot more tools, and a lot more expert support.

More Than Just Votes

At the most basic level, these devices have qwerty- or phone-style keypads that allow members of an audience to vote on questions or send text messages to the speaker, with those responses available in real time. They are frequently used in stockholder meetings, at which verifiable votes are required. Teresa Schoffelman, vice president, internal communications manager, for Green Bay, WI-based Associated Banc-Corp is responsible for running monthly teleconferences and five live meetings a year: four smaller, quarterly conferences of about 120 people and one sales- and service-focused meeting for about 400 the bank's retail banking division managers. While she relies on the bank's in-house staff entirely for the smaller meetings, for the larger meeting she brings in IML, a British provider of handheld audience response and voting devices whose U.S. operations are headquartered in New York.

"Using the voting devices creates meaningful interaction," Schoffelman says. "We build quiz questions into the presentations to get meeting participants engaged in the topic. The data we collect helps us gauge the audience's understanding of core topics, and provides a basis for follow-up communications to meeting participants."

Schoffelman says that real-time data gathering capacity can also be used to change session content on the fly— although she recommends planning for that in advance.

Speeches and PowerPoint presentations "tend to be one-way conversations," says Mike Vinup, vice president of IML North America. "We have focused on using text messaging and the microphones to create two-way, dynamic conversations. It's a much faster paced Q&A. One way it's trending now is to make the meeting more of a workshop."

That is how Rodger Stotz, chief research officer of the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF), used the IML device at the group's Annual Invitational fundraising and networking event in May. The event featured two roundtables on two successive days, in which the results of the May 2010 Pulse Survey, a research project on the state of the incentive industry was presented, and the participants were asked for their input to help direct future research.

On the first day, Stotz asked participants to use their IML devices to answer the same questions that were asked of Pulse Survey participants. Based on those responses—results were shown in real time—Stotz was able to craft the second day's presentation to reflect the differences between the two groups. And live questions were used on the second day to gauge audience response.

"It was my first experience with IML, and overall it was a great way to capture input and engage from the audience," says Stotz, who has decades of experience as a speaker. "We were able to see where our audience was versus the national audience." By analyzing the similarities and differences, Stotz was able to direct the second day's presentation to reflect the results. "It influenced what we covered," he says, adding that he took IML's advice and planned ahead for day two. "We looked at what we'd do if the data were totally different, if it were the same, or if it were mixed"—in fact it was the latter—"and prepared for each."

Another feature of IML's device, which currently uses a phone-style keypad but will be replaced with a newer model this fall with a full qwerty thumb keyboard, color screen, and upgraded microphone, is that if a smart card registered to each user is not inserted, the user cannot be identified. Thus, users can text in questions on sensitive topics without being intimidated of challenging the boss. On the other hand, with smart cards in use, Vinup says IML devices can be used to register stockholder votes or "track how a sales rep answers quiz questions over three days of a conference, and use that for certification of training," he says. "You can also see where they're missing information, and relay that to a manager who can help fill in the gaps."

Originally published Aug. 1, 2010

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