Engage your audience and collect accurate data, using Live Audience Polling

The ability to capture the attention of an audience is a huge challenge that faces the modern-day public speaker. It can be extremely frustrating to watch eyes plunge to stare at phones, or heads turn to begin private conversations. Without the right technology, presentations can often feel like an endless cycle of using new tactics to convey key messages but never completely being heard.
 
So, how do you engage your listeners? How do you maintain your audience’s ever so short attention span? And most importantly, how do collect accurate and actionable data to make informative business decisions?
 
The answer? Congress Rental’s Audience Response Solution. This solution is proven to increase audience attention, participation and engagement through anonymous direct response. Improved audience involvement results in higher rates of discussion amongst peers, higher levels of audience interaction, as well as improved learning quality and outcomes. As well as this, Congress Rental’s Audience Response Solution is completely customisable, easy for delegates to use and has data assembling proficiencies. It’s available in both keypad and smartphone alternatives.

Capture your audience’s attention and promote learning and feedback

​Congress Rental’s Keypad System allows your guests to answer electronically displayed multiple-choice questions using a remote-control device, so they can share an active voice in your presentation. This is beneficial for both the speaker and the audience due to heightened engagement, feedback capabilities, and live data collection. Kay and LeSage (2009) found a major benefit of obtaining your audience’s opinion through live polling is that their retention of knowledge is significantly increased.
 
By posing questionnaires, games or quizzes at regular intervals, you’re able to understand if your key messages are being retained or lost. This is particularly useful before embarking on your discussion, to gauge your audience’s comprehension of the topic you’re delivering. That way, you can tailor your knowledge to the appropriate learning level of the room. 

Create an interactive experience for delegates

​With real-time polling results available to the speaker, the data can be presented within moments to encourage discussion and gather feedback. An inventive way our live audience polling system was used was at Brisbane performance, Terror, the play. Allowing the audience to share their perceived actions as both Judge, and Jury in a mock trial changed the direction of the play’s outcome by increasing audience participation. After presenting the results, ethical and moral questions as to why people voted the way they did evoked an elaborate discussion.
 

Gather insightful and reliable data

​The audience response system’s anonymity factor helps improve the feedback process by giving your audience confidence and security in their responses. When you pose a question, your audience is required to briefly think about the question or problem before committing to an answer. This limits the restrictions that come with a show of hands, for example. With guaranteed anonymity, the data results immediately become more authentic and reliable.
 
By using an open channel of communication, targeting your presentation to suit the needs of your audience now becomes a creative challenge. Whether you use it to pose thought-provoking questions, to seek opinions, or to question your audience understandings of the discussed topic – your messages immediately become more meaningful. You also profit from the data stockpiling of the questions and answers posed in your presentation.
 

​The benefit of using an audience response solution with data collection abilities improves the outcome of executive decision-making, professional development seminars, and market research. It provides your audience with a sense of contribution to corporate training, medical training, and events. Not only this, but it adds an element of fun to conferences, events, trivia, and game shows, making it the perfect all-round solution for increased engagement.
 
The best part? Once you’ve delivered your extra engaging and interactive presentation, you no longer need to compile data reports and evaluations. Congress Rental’s audience polling system has done the hard work for you, with collected data available to you immediately following your event. The result? You've strengthened your market insights, more clearly understood your demographics and have left your audience with a compelling memory of your discussion.
 

Author

Amanda Doyle.