Webinar Wire

Prioritizing Questions

Posted by Ken Molay June 6 2009 2:51 PM EST

1 comment

The Conference Group recently announced that they have added a feature to their ReadyShow web conferencing platform to give event moderators more control over questions submitted from the audience during a webinar.

I haven't had a chance to use it and this is not an endorsement for the company or their software. But speaking as a professional event moderator, I LOVE THIS FEATURE!!! I hope other vendors will take note and put similar functionality on their development plans.

The Conference Group is not the first to implement this. Stream57 included question prioritization a few releases ago and there are a few other products that have something similar. I can't remember them off the top of my head, so if you are a vendor that allows question prioritization, feel free to add a comment and let us know. All I know is that it is still far too uncommon.

If you run small web conference meetings or take audience questions over the phone, you may wonder what I'm going on about. Imagine a larger public webinar with hundreds of attendees. I often work on these as a moderator, supporting two or three presenters who are experts on the material. We have a live Q&A session at the end of the event where I read questions typed in by the audience and our experts answer them.

With highly specialized subject matter, I may have a difficult time figuring out which questions are most relevant or which ones might be too difficult or lengthy for addressing in the live Q&A session.

I want my speakers to be able to scroll through the questions and indicate a priority so that I know which ones they are ready and eager to answer. I also want to know which ones they want me to skip.

Q&A or chat handling is one of the areas that has the greatest differentiation between web conferencing vendors. Some work best for small collaborative sessions. Some have powerful options, but require too much training to make them convenient for guest speakers who want a simple interface. When evaluating webinar products in a selection decision, pay particular attention to this area if you plan to hold large public events with Q&A.