Audience Participation through Live Q&A at #NewHarvest2016

by Meera Zassenhaus

At our conference last week, we used Sli.do instead of a more traditional Q&A session after each panel. Our hope was to encourage a more active and engaging dialogue between the audience and panelists.

It was a huge success.

The audience submitted questions via Sli.do on their phones/laptops and the stream of questions was projected onto a screen for the speakers to see in real-time. The audience could upvote their favorite questions, which would then make their way to the top of the stream as they garnered more likes.

Me approving Sli.do questions. We moderated Sli.do comments just in case hugely inflammatory or joke questions were submitted, which fortunately didn’t happen, so practically every question was ‘approved.’

The Sli.do questions sparked lively debate!

Certain comments by the speakers generated a flurry of Sli.do submissions, and it was amazing to see the audience’s reactions in real-time.

Some stats:

There were 207 active users (out of 300 audience members).

Attendees asked 296 questions which got 1447 likes.

92% of questions were asked anonymously.

Below is the archive of all questions submitted, organized by number of likes. Some get pretty spicy!