Enhanced Meeting Technologies Online Collaboration

I remember my first job in the beginning of the 1990s, in which a shared whiteboard on your network was the cool thing. Multiple users could simultaneously review, edit, or draw on the presentation.

Since then, online collaboration tools have come an incredibly long way in terms of ease of use, functionality, and availability. People can now access Web-based collaboration platforms and meet virtually anywhere they go at any time. Here are a few of my favorites.

Doc sharing: Google Docs and Microsoft Office Live Workspace (among numerous others) allow you to create documents and have many people access and work on them from wherever they are. Your agendas, presentations, spreadsheets, meeting notes, or project updates can be managed simply and for free. Try sharing your upcoming agenda for comments, additions, or suggestions about what needs to be accomplished in this meeting.

Basecamp: A leading online project collaboration tool and fantastic system from the company 37 Signals. (Also, a cool book from its founders, titled Rework, has some great content on “Toxic Meetings.”) While not a free system, it's very affordable and packed with features that provide real value for any project team that is meeting virtually or in person on a regular basis.

Web meetings: Wow, too many to mention, but you've likely heard of several of the big players in the market, including WebEx and GoToMeeting. These have become widely used in many situations where planned one-to-many learning meetings, or even ad hoc quick collaboration meetings, are necessary and need screen sharing or collaborative workspace, complete with real-time video capabilities if you so desire. They allow participants to join the meeting and interact from anywhere they can access broad-band Internet.

Instant Audience Feedback

Not until several years ago were we able to get truly real-time audience feedback without the need for verbal interruptions. “Hey, we can't hear you!” We polled audiences through showing of hands, applause, or surveys and evaluated their engagement by the snooze factor of the meeting (e.g., how many people were snoring). Technology has changed this whether we like or not. And it doesn't just provide instant feedback to the presenter or meeting planner, it broadcasts it to the world.

You've heard of Twitter all right, and people may even be tweeting about your meeting right now. Users have 140 characters in the form of a microblog to share their thoughts, message, or rant. Although I'm on Twitter (@JonPetz), I still find myself struggling to find the time or reason why people would be interested in what I had for lunch. However, in larger meetings and conferences, I find it invaluable for the attendees and the organizing team.

For events, you can follow all the updates if you know the particular event code that uses the # symbol. For example, “Just finished the keynote at the #EVENT2011 national convention.” If you search #EVENT2011 on Twitter, you will see everyone who is tweeting about that event publicly. How could this possibly be helpful?

For the organizers, what a great way to communicate to your attendees en masse about changes to programs, bus schedules, or other updates. The downside is that not everyone is listening. You can't rely on this message getting to all attendees.

For vendors at these shows, what a great way to market. (Overdo it, though, and people will stay clear of you.) Maybe once at a conference, try a tweet using the # tag: “First one to share their top three lessons learned today at the @BoreNoMore booth enters bonus prize drawing (#EVENT2011).”

As an attendee, let me share with you my first eye-opening experience showing the power of Twitter. I was sitting in the audience at the Meeting Professionals International “Meet Different” Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Hollywood star Ben Stein was on the stage speaking, and his microphone was clipping in and out. I (in an annoyed fashion) tweeted about the challenge of hearing him. Within two minutes there was a tweet from the audio production company (which, of course, has the appropriate # tag for the event in order to track tweets) explaining why this was occurring and what it was doing to fix it. I was amazed. The production company was following the tweets for the event in real time and responded back to me personally—along with everyone else, of course—yet as one person out of thousands in the audience, I felt at peace. I felt I'd been heard and I felt it was being take care of. How about that for customer service at a convention!

At the same event, day two, and I'm into only my second day of Twitter. I was previewing the feeds during another keynote. Behind the speaker was this amazing animated graphic of the Earth spinning. A tweet was broadcast: “This spinning globe is making me sick.” Remarkably, within 30 seconds it stopped spinning. Without that communication we would probably have heard the typical announcement from the PA system: “Cleanup in aisle 425—we've got a puker.”

As a speaker, I expect people to be texting or tweeting to some extent during my presentations, so I share my username (@JonPetz) at the beginning of the presentation, along with the #EVENT tag, if applicable. Although I don't check the search results during the keynote, I know some people who do. If you call out username Doubting Deborah to ask why she thinks your tie conflicts with the colors in your eyes, just imagine her surprise.

Audience Response Technology

While Twitter is communication that isn't planned in many cases, what about opportunities to interact with, engage, and assess the audience on their opinions or status, or to test their understanding of the content you are presenting? That is easily within your reach to implement in small or large meetings, due to the success of the technology and ease of use for participants.

Companies such as Turning Technologies help you create interactive slide presentations that engage audiences and provide them with instantaneous feedback displayed in PowerPoint for all to see. Audience members use a remote-control device supplied by the presenter or simply their Web-enabled phone. If desired, feedback can be anonymous, or it can be set up to track individual user responses while still displaying the answers as a group. Say you want to ask a group of employees what they really think about the new employee benefits, avoid the yelling, and have everyone instantly see the response. This can help.

Try text polling. Do you want to poll the audience in real time but don't have the software or hardware to pull it off? Then send people to their phones. (And just think, you used to tell people to turn them off or leave them by the front door. It's okay … you didn't know any better.)

Text-style (or SMS) polling is a great way to accomplish this with the help of a provider such as Poll Every-where or SMSPoll. They create a real-time experience of information exchange at events with attendees' mobile devices and then display audience responses within presentation software or Web applications. Some systems are enabled for response via Twitter or web sites as well. Their functionality is not generally as robust as the features built into the specific handheld polling devices, but you don't need to buy the devices either. And of course, standard messaging rates apply.

Other Enhancing Ideas

Use podcasts. Why not simply have your status meeting as a downloadable audio file that you can dump onto your phone or a memory stick that you can drop into your smart car? Team members can post quick updates on milestones reached or challenges uncovered. Team members set the Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feed to get notified or auto-download anytime a new file is available.

Try YouTube. If people can't attend a meeting and don't have videoconference capability, have them post a video to YouTube. You don't need flashy editing, just keep it simple. Or, as a meeting organizer, create teaser videos for your meetings. Build the anticipation of the energy and excitement of the conference and share it on YouTube.