Power of Polling in Conference - Use Your Best Gear

Audience Response Technology is one big boon to the event tech world. Using it for tasks like polling and feedback generation has helped the organizers increase their efficiency as well as credibility. How? Let us know.

From venue to attendees and from hospitality to leisure, an event organizer takes care of every single thing. Their only expectation is to put up a good show. But how do you know if it actually was a good show? The biggest critiques of any event are no doubt the attendees. That is the reason asking them for feedback is possibly the wisest thing to do. Now the question that arises is how to do that? The answer is - Audience Response Technology.

What is Audience Response Technology?

Audience Response Technology is an interactive technology that allows a real-time interaction of the audiences with the presenters. 

It is currently being used in many fields apart from the event industry. But, it has a very special role to play when it comes to event technology (Know about some latest Event Tech Trends) and audience engagement tools. 

Audience Response Technology has enabled the event organizers to collect authentic attendees' feedback within seconds. Organizers can conduct real-time polling during the conferences to get immediate feedback from the attendees in the desired areas. But you might me wondering something,

What actually is the Power of Polling in a Conference?

If you are having an add-on in your event tech list, you must know what all good can it do for you. So let us understand the potential power of polling in a conference.

1. Know your highs and lows.

The first and the foremost benefit of using audience response technology for polling is obviously self-evaluation. You get to know what all was the best and the worst in your conference. The main benefit of doing this evaluation is that you can get some solid proof of the preferences of the audience.

Thus, you don't need to rely on mere assumptions.For example, as an organizer, you might think that the ambiance of a conference affects the attendee experience by 9/10. But the average poll results might call for a 6/10. This helps you to prepare yourself better for the next event you want to host.

2. Immediate = Authentic

Immediacy is connected to authenticity in this case because with time, an attendee might actually forget how he/she felt in the moment. Having a poll right after or during the conference will help yield more authentic responses because the attendees will have a fresh memory of their experience.Thus, you can better evaluate their experience for your references.

3. Make it the ideal communication.

Communication by definition demands to be bi-directional. The one-way flow of information is something which no one ever likes. Science says that even plants communicate with each other in a two-way format.

So if you force a human to "just listen" without providing a feedback, you can never host an efficient conference. In small-scale conferences, this might be still easier. But when it comes to the larger ones, you have to turn to audience response technology and polling for doing so. 

4. A good excuse of AUDIENCE FUN TIME!

Apart from being non-ideal, one-way communication is also extremely boring. The key to success for any event is audience engagement. The more you allow your audience to participate, the better show you are putting up. Polling becomes one of the best audience engagement tools for two reasons:

1. It will add some fun time for the audience and help them unwind from the seriousness of the conference.

2. It will provide you with some very functional data within minutes.

5. Remove the possibility of Social Conformity.

Social Conformity is to form biases towards a situation in sync with the social group one is in. Social conformity reduces the authenticity of a given data because an individual may not express his/her actual experience in order to conform with the social group. 

This is where polling with audience response technology can help you. Here, all the attendees are entitled to their own responses. And they get to know about the responses of their peers only after the poll ends. Thus, they are more likely to provide genuine feedback. 

6. Increase your credibility.

Knowing that their (attendees') opinion matters to you can be a major trust winning factor for your organization. Whenever you ask the attendees for their feedback, you are letting them know that their feelings and opinions are important to you.

This increases your credibility in their minds. Thus, it helps you to build a better reputation for your organization.

Those were some of the benefits of using audience response technology for polling in conferences. Tell us which was the most important one according to you, in the comment section below.

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Until next time!