Have you ever witnessed that moment of confusion on stage at a conference? The Chairperson is trying to read a question to the expert panel on stage and pauses at the critical moment trying to decipher the illegible scrawl a delegate has (enthusiastically) made to submit their question?

Or perhaps the delegate is asking through a microphone and isn’t the best communicator, leading to a general “scratching of heads” and a momentary pause followed by a response from the stage such as – “What is your question exactly?”

Anyone that has managed a question and answer session at a conference knows that it can be challenging enough to focus on answering the question effectively without adding issues arising from communication problems.

Add to that the situations where there is a panel of people on stage and the Chairperson is expected to interact in conversational format – discussing potentially difficult or provocative questions with the panel is difficult enough without creating additional distractions.

Adding Interactive Event Technology to these situations should always make life easier, not add more problems. It’s the whole point of the exercise.  Audience + Engagement should = a better event?

Using a digital system to gather audience questions is an obvious way to tackle some of these issues. Being able to quickly and easily submit a question to the stage at any time during a presentation is an obvious plus for delegates – but another critical part of delivering the right solution is to make sure the Chairperson doesn’t have to “battle” with the technology.

Their primary focus on answering questions and interacting with panellists should be about the topic at hand, not the technology in their hand.

At SonorPlex we understand that our job is to make life easy for the person in the “hot-seat”.

We provide a system that allows incoming questions to be posed quickly and easily by delegates, using any connected device available to them. Our key goal in delivering those questions to the stage is about keeping it simple for the Chairperson – let the off-stage moderation function remove distraction and management from the Chairperson’s workload and let them focus on the topic at hand.

© Niall O’Connor June 2017