Research

Firstly, read around the conversation subject before the event, so that you understand the most relevant topic areas and the latest updates. This will keep the discussion on track and interesting.

Secondly, look into your participants. You should memorise their names and be able to provide a short biographical statement about them without looking at your notes. Not only will this make your introductions more effective, but you will be able to host a more balanced discussion if you understand the perspectives of each speaker.

Know your audience

Just like the topic and your panellists, it’s good practice to familiarise yourself with your audience demographics before the event. How interested and informed about the discussion topics will they be before coming to the event? Again, anticipating any existing knowledge or beliefs can help you to direct a more engaging conversation.

While you’re moderating, don’t forget to read the audience, looking for facial expressions and body language that tell you the overall reactions to a question or statement. Use these cues to direct where your conversation should go next.

Stay completely neutral

It’s best to stick to neutral language when introducing each guest, avoiding words like “brilliant” or “controversial” so that your audience can form their own opinions about the discussion. Stick to the facts and don’t appear to take sides if you want to be a fair moderator.

Keep the audience engaged

Don’t forget to engage and include the people watching and listening to the debate. You could take polls, ask questions or take comments from your audience during the debate, rather than making them wait for a tagged-on “Q&A” session at the end.

Using an Audience Response System to do this provides several benefits. It’s less disruptive and more inclusive than conventional hand-raising, as answers or votes can be silently provided by all participants simultaneously. Results can be collected instantly, meaning that they can be incorporated seamlessly into the discussion, and the anonymity of answering by keypad means that you are likely to get a greater number of more honest answers than a more visual method.

Provide a conclusion

It doesn’t matter if your panel ended in a consensus or a complete disagreement; you should wrap it up with a summary of key points, packaged in a concise statement or question that your guests can take away to consider.

You can read more about how to successfully plan a conference in one of our previous posts, or contact us today for more information about incorporating an Audience Response System into your events.

Everyone has days where they’re feeling short of creativity and it’s easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to preparing presentations. We’ve put together 10 suggestions for ways in which you can tweak your routine to make it more interesting for you and your audience.

1 – Break it up a bit

If your material is particularly serious or dense, give your audience some mental interludes with an occasional change of format. Include picture-only slides to support analogies, bring another speaker on for a debate or throw in a humorous video – anything to change it up for your listeners.

2 – Ask questions

Your audience has been sat down and talked at countless times before, but why not turn it around and put the onus on them for a change? Use an Audience Response System to integrate pop quizzes, opinion polls and yes/no voting into your presentation and build off of your results. We’ve put together some tips for this here and here.

3 – Bring your passion to the table

Yes, some topics are naturally more interesting than others, but why would you be talking about a subject if you found it boring? Let your audience see your enthusiasm, whatever you’re talking about.

4 – Be yourself

Some people find themselves becoming awkward and stiff at the front of a room, under the impression that they need to be rehearsed and formal. There’s no right or wrong way to deliver a presentation, so if you’re a natural storyteller or like to use your hands when you talk, lean into it a bit – just maybe do a dry run in front of a trusted colleague to make sure you’re not going overboard!

5 – Don’t be scared of humour

If you’re comfortable telling jokes (don’t try this one if you’re not), inject some wit or light comedy into your presentation to break the ice and make your speech more memorable.

6 – Bin the script

Rehearsing what you’re going to say is a great way to prepare and having prompt cards can keep you on track. Memorising everything word for word? Yawn.

7 – Pick up some props

There’s a reason why show-and-tell is so popular at school – bringing in an object creates intrigue and gives your audience members something to focus on while you tell your story.

8 – Bring props for your audience if you can, too

It’s not always possible, especially at larger events, but giving your listeners something that relates to your message is a good way to increase curiosity and stay memorable.

9 – Mix up your presentation software

Powerpoint is like an old friend, but introducing a slightly different format (like Prezi, or Visme) can shake up your routine.

10 – Ditch the slides

If you’re feeling really brave, let go of text-based slides altogether, and rely on your own charisma to bring your topic to life.

Through working with a huge variety of organisations, we’ve noticed how interactivity between teams and departments is becoming more and more central to everyday business operations. We’ve put together a short list of ways in which you can encourage transparency and improve employee engagement when it comes to team meetings, all of which can be streamlined with the help of an Audience Response System.

Reinforce understanding of new concepts

If you’re planning to implement a new strategy, it’s important that your team are on board. To achieve this, it really helps if they fully understand the ideas, methods and goals that you are describing. Once you’ve articulated your plans, spend a significant part of your meeting going through example situations, asking your team how they might respond, according to the new strategy. You could use CLiKAPAD handsets to create a multiple-choice quiz – just make sure to leave plenty of time to talk through answers as a group.

Create a safe space for big questions

To continue running your business transparently, it’s important to make time for your employees to ask any queries they have about policies or practice. Find a way for staff to submit questions prior to the meeting (anonymously, if they wish), then have meeting participants vote on which issues they would most like addressed. This promise of answers makes it more likely that people will attend – and pay attention during – your meeting, as well as making sure your teams feel listened to.

Inter-team recognition

Before your meeting, ask your staff which of their colleagues have been particularly helpful to them in the last month or so, and collate the names on a slide (try using a word cloud arrangement). This makes it easier to give credit to quieter employees, which in turn boosts morale, encourages collaborative behaviour and lets you know who are the hardest-working members of your team.

Alternatively, you could accept nominations prior to the meeting, then use voting handsets for bigger groups to anonymously identify which of their peers they believe to be most deserving of recognition.

Discussing shared challenges

A core part of agile working is to routinely assess each project and identify what obstacles may prevent successfully meeting targets. One useful tool is to keep a running list of the most likely problems to arise, so that when your team checks in together you reprioritise the biggest threats according to a vote.

If you would like more inspiration about how interactivity and Audience Response Systems can be used to improve decision-making in your company, contact us to discuss your needs today.

Everyone makes mistakes, but when it comes to Event Management, even the smallest slip-up or misjudgement can mean thousands in lost revenue. Here are five tips for ensuring the success of your big event.

Ask your audience

Although it may seem obvious, the most diligent experience organisers will always make an effort to check in with their attendees at the beginning, middle and end of their day. Using voting keypads, perhaps during a breakout survey, is an easy way to do this, and a CLiKAPAD system will quickly and accurately record data from hundreds of participants at a time.

Keep your satisfaction survey short and sweet, with as few questions as possible and utilising numerical ratings to capture a spectrum of audience responses.

Invest in the details

Extend your guests the same courtesies you would enjoy, say, if you were staying at a hotel. That’s to say, a comfortable chair, free Wi-Fi and a few free refreshments. Even if your attendees have turned up to see a particular speaker, or only get involved with a certain aspect of the event, it doesn’t let you off the hook of being an attentive host.

Reward the early birds

The first people who got excited about your event, and didn’t think twice about attending? They are your brand’s biggest fans, and offer a huge opportunity for getting the word about elsewhere.

Make the most of these loyal supporters and encourage them to advocate your event to their friends and business partners. One way to do this is to incentivise them to spread the message, rewarding them every time someone signs up as a result of their encouragement. Referral schemes are a great way of boosting your numbers without really having to do much work.

Make it fresh

Just because your event line-up went down a storm last year doesn’t give you a pass to wheel out the same routine again and again. In fact, it’s more likely to damage the excellent relationship you have with your most loyal following, as they’ll get bored faster than your newer faces.

Bringing new ideas and stations for your guests to interact with will not only bring much greater value to your attendees, but also remind them that your company is forward-thinking, rather than stuck in the past.

Be prepared for the worst

A risk assessment should be part of your planning process from early on, including any likely or unlikely events that might derail the success of your event. While it’s important to stay optimistic and focused on making the day as good as possible, don’t ignore potential threats. Keep tabs on stressed links in your delivery chain and always have a contingency.

For more information about planning an event with a CLiKAPAD Audience Response System, give our team a call on 03333 448 550 or send us a message via our Contact Us page and we’ll get in touch as soon as possible.

Amongst all the convenience these gadgets provide, it’s easy to forget what they’re doing in the background; collecting, storing and using data. The huge volumes of information collected by devices all around the world is what we call “big data”, and it’s really, really useful.

How does big data relate to my presentation?

You know those consumer feedback surveys that used to be found on front desks? The ones where responses had to be manually collated to discern how shoppers, guests or event attendees responded to your product, service or presentation? Well, big data is the modern equivalent, except it’s streamlined, digital and there’s a lot more of it.

Using an Audience Response System (ARS) at your event or presentation is the contemporary replacement of those feedback forms. They offer a straightforward way to gain insights from thousands of people in a very short space of time, while all of the information is electronically fed into accurate, digestible graphs. Deployed strategically, an ARS can gather huge amounts of feedback at a staggering rate of ROI.

Why is this useful?

The information you gather is exceptionally valuable, and can be used to improve the operations of your business, whether that’s down to getting large-scale customer feedback about your products, a clear picture about the demographics of your audience or understanding at which points consumer attention dropped off. In these cases, the more data you have, the more accurately you can plan your response – would you rather hear from 50 customers or 1000?

Over time, the big data you collect can be used to produce better advertising, stronger marketing campaigns and more relevant products overall – maximising the revenue of your company.

How do I start?

That’s easy! If you have a conference, presentation or event coming up, contact our team to discuss your requirements. Equally, if you would just like some more information about how a CLiKAPAD response system could be used to help you gather data at your event, contact us for experienced advice and recommendations.

At least once, we have all walked out of a meeting and wondered if anything was actually achieved.

Usually, it’s one where more people than usual attended, and something important needed to be agreed. Suddenly everybody is given a slice of the limelight, and between clashing opinions and personalities, the discussion spiralled away from the main point and no conclusion was reached.

If only there were some way of gathering a group of responses in a calm, quiet and well-ordered manner… some sort of system for audience responses… like… an Audience Response System?

We have found that these frustrating and tedious scenarios have been substantially improved by the introduction of a CLiKAPAD Audience Response System (ARS), as it offers a quick, organised way for everyone in the room to provide feedback on a project, idea or presentation without interrupting each other or derailing the flow of discourse.

It’s quick, quiet and anonymous

When staff from every corner of the company get thrown together in a room, it can be difficult for some people to “break rank” or speak their mind for fear of professional repercussions. Answering on a keypad is much more discreet than raising a hand and speaking in front of a room full of people, and will make sure that quieter employees or those that do not usually have a voice are heard equally. On top of that, pressing a button is much faster and quieter than listening to people talk over each other!

Complete versatility

No matter what you’re presenting, be it a new website, a business decision or an office re-shuffle, there are a multitude of ways to incorporate interactivity with an ARS. For example:

– Using numbers or letters to identify the parts they liked the most
– Ranking the areas which need the most improvement
– Choosing a topic for further discussion
– Prioritising the options most important to them
– Voting to choose between multiple versions
– Answering a quiz on their understanding following a presentation

No training required

Unlike a lot of survey software, an ARS requires very little (if any) training or experience before use. The handsets have a familiar-looking, intuitive interface, and once you have explained how you intend to integrate them into the meeting, they are exceptionally easy for all members of the company to use.

So, next time you notice there’s a chaotic meeting coming up on your calendar, why not give us a call to see how we can take the stress away for you.

Audience Response Systems work in such a way that they allow team members to provide an opinion on the subject matter when asked using multiple choice answers. This allows a communication between the staff and the speaker and is also a great way of collecting important data. While data collection can be long and tedious, an Audience Response System makes it far easier for speakers to collect and reflect upon information and opinions from your company.

Data is Swift and Easy to Collect – No More Tiresome Questionnaires to Hand Out

Using an Audience Response System means collecting immediate results. With a CLiKAPAD system, the results are instantaneously collected and plotted on a graph, allowing you to see the results of the poll within minutes and even seconds for smaller conferences. This retires the old notion of using hand-out questionnaires as a means of collecting data from your delegates, saves on paper and increases the chances of getting unbiased and anonymous feedback.

Even Simple Questions Can Yield Results

You may be looking for data regarding a matter as simple as whether to have a tea or coffee machine installed in the office kitchen. By posing your question to a group, allowing them to input their chosen answer anonymously, you can easily collect data on a whole range of different issues, from smaller meeting points to more major issues.

Making Seminars Fun and Productive to Follow

Meetings are an essential point of any business and at times, they can get tedious, particularly if you are attending AGMs or a summary of that year’s reports and progress and what it may mean for the company. Unless you work in a very tightly knit team and handle all aspects of the business, it is likely that there will be points of the conference that are less familiar to the individual. Using an Audience Response System as a means of collecting data helps to keep the delegates alert, asks their opinion on certain matters and also helps to break up the event. By asking questions relating to your speech topic, you keep your delegates focused and engaged, making it easier to collect data from them and making the entire conference more pleasant for everyone involved.

CLiKAPAD provides professional support for Audience Response Systems for conferences and business meetings, with downloadable software available that helps make any CLiKAPAD system swift and easy to use.

However in some instances, simply creating these procedures and tutorials for employees to follow is not enough when it comes to ensuring the safety of everyone on site. There may be liabilities that you have not planned for, or employees may go about certain procedures in a way that causes a risk you may not have predicted. The only real way to find and eliminate these risks is through regular meetings and risk assessment workshops with your employees. At CLiKAPAD, we will show how an Audience Response System can be put to good use when covering risk assessment workshops.

Quick Way of Collecting Data

For both risk assessment workshops and training purposes, an Audience Response System provides a means of quickly collecting data and configuring into a usable graph almost instantly. When looking at risks, you can quickly find out what your team think about the risk in question, allowing them to help construct a risk map using CLiKAPAD handheld clicker systems.

For trainees, highlighting the potential risks is also made easier with an Audience Response System, as you can easily collect data on what they might do to help prevent accident or injury. In collecting data in useful graphs, you can pull together all the graphs to create a risk assessment report at the end of each session.

It Can Determine the Best Solution to Any Given Problem

One of the best way to determine a solution to a problem is by posing that problem as a question to a group of professionals. As experienced employees, your team should be able to work together to find out the best solution to any potential risks and answer accordingly.

Where there is some doubt, the majority answer can be put into practice in a trial run.

If the risk is subsequently reduced, you have a more secure health and safety system than before, simply by using data collected from an Audience Response System.

Additional Comments Allow Further Discussion

Risk assessment meetings are not simply ways of checking whether or not the health and safety procedures are still in date, or whether any new risks have cropped up since the last assessment. It is also a means of communication between your employees to see if there is any way you can make the procedures easier and more effective for them.

Meetings such as these also help you to assess potential risks you may not have previously considered when creating the safety procedures. Theoretical procedures will only work to an extent whereas, in practice, your employees may have figured out a better way of preparing for certain safety procedures. In order to save time and in order to provide better training examples for future employees, it is important that this useful information is brought to light and integrated into the safety manuals and procedures. This way, you streamline your health and safety processes every time you have a risk assessment meeting.

When addressing a number of attendees at a work conference or speech, relevant research may be done to determine the best method for keeping the attention of your audience. This can be through feedback surveys or encouraging responses throughout the conference and a whole range of other techniques. However it can also be a good idea to record audience feedback once again after the conference, to see if there are any misgivings about the conference itself or the delivery of a particular speech.

How can a company go about this and what can they do with the feedback given?

Step 1 – Getting the Data

By using a state-of-the-art CLiKAPAD Audience Response System, you can create a multiple choice questionnaire for the audience. You could also include additional comments for your target audience to voice any questions or concerns. This can be done throughout the conference or at a separate point following a conference. Once you have gathered your feedback, you’ll want to start collecting useful data from it.

Step 2 – Taking on Board and Actioning a Response to Feedback

Certain audiences respond more positively to presentations, than others and it is important to take into account what worked and what didn’t in these situations. Businesses can sometimes misread an audience, you can be sure that your audience will provide feedback on how to improve for the next seminar. By reading through and taking on board feedback provided from the delegates at your event, you can begin to create a tailor made product better suited to the needs of your audience.

Step 3 – Product Changes or Re-Branding Products

Once customer feedback has been received and responded to, you can start changing your conference structure or speech to fit guest needs better. Companies can then use this feedback to better correspond with the needs of the delegates in preparation for the next event.

For example, if market research determined that the customer preferred a shorter presentation from each speaker but with a longer group interaction or session, whereas the Audience Response System showed a greater preference for a singular speech covering all the topics planned for discussion, followed by a short question and answer session, you can make these amendments and correct them in future conferences showing your response to valuable client feedback. In doing this you create a communication between your conference organisers ‘assumptions’ and what your delegates are actually interested in, in order to improve their experience with the event as a whole

In short, listening to client feedback, is incredibly important and often contributes to the growth and increased client base of any company.

Location – Make it Easily Accessible

An example of this would be having your conference within Zone 1 rather than branching out and making it more difficult for people to get to your event. Some people will be leaving work early or travelling at peak hours to make your conference, so keep it simple and base your conference somewhere where travel options are plentiful.

Cover the Tech Side Early

Technical glitches are the bane of any conference organiser as they disrupt timing and create a seemingly unprofessional depiction of your event. Make sure that you make the most of the help of tech experts, for instance our expert assistance here at CLiKAPAD regarding our clicker systems, or the venue themselves who can show you the ins-an-outs of their available tech options.

Share Progress Feedback and Info

Almost always neglected by so important if you’re planning on hosting another conference in future is the feedback you get form your audience. The day isn’t over when you stop talking or the demonstration comes to an end, so make sure you thank people for coming, hand over questionnaires to be filled out and ask questions during breaks or the after-party.

For more information regarding our Audience Response Systems here at CLiKAPAD, call us on 03333 448 550 and our friendly team will be happy to help.