Great post. Happy to see strategic thinkers in the industry sharing ideas/info via this and other blogs.

I completely agree that you can’t throw ARS out there and expect it to make presentations dynamic. I’ve seen ARS used very effectively to engage the audience but more often than not it’s used poorly. If the ARS tool is used to simply poll the audience and not to direct the speaker’s presentation, the audience quickly becomes bored with the excercise. Question design makes all the difference, and I look forward to your upcoming posts on that issue.

On another topic, event technology has the potential not only of making presentations more engaging but also of automating tasks so that the event managers and his/her team can eliminate many manual aspects of events and focus on what’s truly strategic. For example, an electronic survey solution can release the team from the task of distributing and collecting paper surveys and instead concentrate on analyzing attendance and/or booth visit results, and making any necessary changes to enhance the value of the event.

Thanks for starting this conversation.

Roger

– Augmenting the f2f experience with online activities, thus stretching the event span to a much wider timeframe.

and/or

– implementing offline schemes for whatever online social networking activity or virtual event is out there.

Hope that makes sense

Thanks for commenting. It sounds like we both are hearing the same messages.

As the conversation evolves, I look forward to reading your comments and insights.

– Sam

Thanks for sharing your comments, ideas and questions. These are great ideas and potential blog topics. These are all things that we will discuss in the coming days, weeks and months on this blog.

Your question about the guy who loses interest in the session and starts checking his email is an important one. I want to give you a quick answer now:

Regardless of the speaker, content and format of the event – there will always be people that mentally checkout of the event. Sometimes the reasons are legitimate – other times they are not. You shouldn’t let the one or two people that disengage in the discussion block the decision to use mobile technology or social media for the entire group.

IMO, here are some legitimate reasons that a person would check email or SMS text during an event:
Expecting a big contract from a new client.
Addressing a customer service concern.
Answering a quick question for a colleague.
Resolving an emergency childcare issue that popped up.

I love the energy and enthusiasm! I will make sure that we address your questions!!

thanks again!!

– Sam

Integrating online and offline is another great idea. Sounds like I have to add this to my blog post list, too!

Just for clarification, when you say online and offline – do you mean:

(1) integrating the experience between the virtual people and the f2f people OR
(2) creating a more seemless experience between the online and offline experiences
OR
(3) All of the above?

Regardless, I think that both are worthy of some additional thought and discussions.

Great Ideas! Thanks again for your input!

– Sam

Likely, we need to focus on better, faster and cheaper, yes?

Blaming the technology (ARS) for the reason speaker’s don’t get good information is like blaming McDonald’s for why people are fat.

To your point, it’s not the tools, it’s the design of the questions that matter.

Getting the information needed to engage, evoke, elicit, excite, etc… is the job of the questioner, not the tool used to give the response.