Interacting with the audience at conferences, seminars and workshops is a positive and valuable aim, helping to improve attention spans, increase energy levels and motivate delegates to become more involved.

However, straightforward objectives are not without their obstacles that contrive to make the marketer's or event organiser's life more difficult. With the pressure on to consistently demonstrate value on the marketing investment, events and conferences need to deliver a return.

Audience engagement systems are now coming to the fore to assist with the planning, running and evaluating of live events. These qualitative and quantitative tools ensure better audience involvement and a greater ‘tangible' return.

By adhering to the following guidelines, marketers can leverage the strengths of engagement to enable a forum to effectively interact:

Innovate
Look to revise how previous events have been run and introduce new elements that will engage and enthuse the delegates. Audience engagement systems, for example, allow marketers and delegates to interact more freely while keeping attention spans high in a lively and accessible forum.

With the latest systems, an event can be as innovative as the facilitator wants it to be. They enable electronic files, including video clips, spreadsheets or Word documents to be sent to a delegate's tabletop engagement system, stimulating interest and encouraging interaction; specific tasks and questions can be set to obtain immediate feedback on any issue under discussion; and finally, the facilitator can look to the internet for additional content and examples.

Net new material
Historically, the focus has been on developing presentations that inspire, and selecting speakers and facilitators that deliver output in an interesting and timely manner. The problem is that it doesn't allow for a great deal of flexibility or react to the mood on the floor.

Full audience engagement technologies now extend this concept delivering greater value at events through shared ideas, captured feedback and heightened two-way dialogue, providing valuable new material for discussion in a later session on the same day.

Technology
Today, technology is playing a major part in driving stakeholder engagement and adding a competitive edge to any live event. Interactive voting systems are a new medium of communication at meetings and conferences. Simple solutions consist of credit card-sized palmlets delivering ‘yes', ‘no' and multiple-choice voting.

Leading providers in the field have also developed touchscreen tablet PCs with bespoke software designed to gather qualitative and quantitative data. Free text responses ensure that all voices in a forum are heard and that comments and ideas are instantaneously captured and shared.

Encourage
A significant advantage of engagement technologies is that audience anxieties are reduced as questions, ideas and opinions are brought to the group anonymously without any fear of speaking out loud. How many times has a seminar or conference spluttered due to awkward silences at question time? Or the same person's hand repeatedly goes up? With a full audience engagement system in place, people that would not normally put their hand up in front of hundreds of people are encouraged to interact more freely. This delivers empowerment and balanced contributions from a wider spectrum of people. 

Respond to feedback
Traditionally, debates or discussions at conferences involved breaking off into groups and moving into separate rooms for multiple facilitators to lead proceedings; discussion notes then needed deciphering from paper flip charts or whiteboards. Now, next generation audience engagement systems enable several group activities to be run in the same room as different questions can be electronically sent to multiple units. This eliminates breakout room budgets, multiple facilitator costs and specific venue searching; but, most importantly, it saves time.

Group or individual responses can be touch typed onto the screen of the tablet PC and fed into the engagement system. Results can be presented on screens at the front of rooms to encourage response and reaction. Brainpower and ideas from group working are harnessed much more quickly than traditional routes and can then be shared again across the whole event for further refining.

Analyse
The latest engagement systems make data capture a more succinct and practical possibility for gauging audience responses in real time and sharing this information immediately, leading to a more positive and valuable experience for all concerned.

After the event the next important stage is to evaluate the response. Audience engagement systems pull together all the responses to deliver a post-show report in an accessible format, which can be sent to delegates or added to conference web areas. This report can deliver demographic breakdowns of results and the automatic pooling into graphical illustrations.

The gathered data can assist in future event planning, identifying trends and developing communication strategies.

Collaborate
The use of audience engagement systems opens the door to a different way of planning live events. Collaboration is encouraged between delegates, facilitators and conference leaders. Ideas and opinions can be shared within the room, which in turn yields greater post-conference results for analysis.

In addition, audience engagement provides opportunities for professionals in a variety of different functions in the same organisation including marketing, HR, sales and consultation to work together. Knowledge can be unlocked and shared across departments; views can be aired from people who may not usually get a chance to contribute; concepts can be more readily understood by everyone involved.

Two-way dialogue
When the key objective at a conference is to gather the maximum amount of stakeholder input in an interesting and engaging manner, interactive technologies can deliver some significant benefits. The innovative systems are easy for delegates to use, deliver instant analysis and encourage a two-way interactive environment.

Toby Lewis is managing director of LiveInteractive. For more information visit www.liveinteractive.co.uk [1]