The age-old question of what is going on in other people’s heads is always relevant, not the least when it comes to meetings and events. In order to succeed in creating an appreciated and memorable meeting, you must take your participant's prior knowledge, needs, and interests into account – but how can you know what they want without being able to read their minds?
Of course, none of us can read minds, but there are other things we can do to find out what our friends, colleagues, and event participants are thinking. If you have access to an event app, there are some neat tricks you can use before, during, and after your meetings to find out what wishes, expectations, and opinions the participants have, make them feel heard and seen and give them prerequisites for influencing both your meeting’s agenda and your overall success.
Gather a lot of honest opinions – open up for anonymous participation!
We’ve all been there. A question is asked to the group, and while some people confidently raise their hand in agreement, others start looking uncomfortable and glance around the room nervously. It is not always easy to be open with your thoughts and feelings, whether it is to answer a simple yes/no question or to explain your position with your own words. In such cases, a meeting app is an unbeatable tool to help every participant contribute their thoughts on their own terms – let them respond anonymously in the app!
Collect suggestions before the meeting
Collect thoughts and wishes from your participants before a meeting using the event app’s dialogue feature. For example, you can put together a questionnaire that guides the participants to provide feedback and tips on an intended topic or theme or create an open “suggestion box” where you let everyone enter their thoughts, wishes and tips freely. Invite everyone to participate well in advance by sending a push notification with info about the suggestion box in the app, then it will be easy for everyone to contribute!
Set the tone during the meeting
To help your participants get into the right mindset so that they engage in what you are talking about and remember what has been said, it is a good idea to begin the meeting with a short brainstorming session. Ask a question regarding the topic of your session, for example, “What do you think we got the best rating on in our last employee survey?”, and have the participants enter their thoughts anonymously in the app. View the result as a word cloud on the big screen and take a few minutes to discuss what has come up before moving on with the agenda. This will give you a common platform to use in your discussions during the day, and the participants will remember what was said to a higher degree.
Collect fresh feedback directly after a presentation
It can be difficult to get feedback on individual program items from participants, right? Whether you thought a presentation was really good or completely incomprehensible, it can be difficult to remember what you were thinking when it’s time to fill in the conference evaluation. Make it easy for your participants to provide feedback on individual program items in the app! Send a push notification (which can be scheduled in advance) after each session with a reminder to leave feedback while it is fresh in memory – the participant can easily rate each session on a scale between 1-5 and write an optional comment.
Gather important feedback with surveys
Evaluations and surveys – not the sexiest concept, perhaps, but they can be really effective when you want to evolve your business and create great meetings and events in the future. Done right, an evaluation can be what stands between repeating a bust and creating an amazing new experience – so don’t forget to evaluate your meetings and events! Create your evaluation in the event app’s dialog feature and remind participants to fill it out by sending out push notifications after the end of the conference. To maximize engagement, set aside time for everyone to do their part and fill out the form. Dedicate 10-15 minutes at the end of the conference or send out the push when everyone are getting on the bus to travel back home – in that way you give your participants the best conditions to take the time to contribute, resulting in really great feedback for you.
Ok, so these tips are good and all, but do they really work? Yep–our tips are always based on experiences that we or our customers have had!