Online Attendee Engagement - Ideas and What Works

Question

Keeping attendees engaged during online events/presentations can be challenging. Let’s share ideas and provide feedback on what works for you. Some of these ideas are from a customer that does internal training at his organization. If you try them, let us know what happens. I look forward to your ideas and what works!

* Have attendees take a short 5 -minute quiz during breaks. Then review the quiz when you meet back as a group.
* These aren’t hands-on WebEx’s, but show attendees how to solve something, then give them 5 – 10 minutes to work on a problem on their own. Then when meet back as a group, review problem.
* Have your champion reinforce concepts/JMP best practices as JMP SE demos them. This emphasizes the importance of these concepts with the attendees.
* Include polling questions. This can be a fun way to interact with attendees.

martindemel · Answer

when we use polls we try to deliver some message, demographic information we get through registration (sometimes):

* E.g. the question "are you registered in the user community?" or "Have you heard of the complementary statistical Thinking E-Lerning Modules?" almost everytime more than half said no. The goal is to tell them that's out there and is good to know of and hopefully register. We saw some increase in whitepapers and STIPS registrations due to this.
* if it is a specific topic, we want to know why they are interested in it or how the do it currently or what vvalue they hope to get from this participation. so e.g. DOE "What do you expect to gain from using DOE?" - Reducing Time - Reducing Costs - Get to market faster - getr more insights - have not thought bout it - ... I believe you get the point :)
* I avoid any relation to Covid19 - you never know how the other person thinks about it

May think also about a kind of “JMP on Air” concept:* Showing a module, then go back to the Journal/PPT and let e.g. the salesperson talk about a use case from a success story or one he knows where this module helped
* That way you have more chunks of presentation, different speakers which probably keeps up attention. 
* The good thing: if this is already included in the material or at least prepared as a slide deck, you do not need to switch presenter rights, just open up and the Sales can start talking, then you take over again showing the next module

Exercise might be possible, but as with polls, the longer the virtual event lasts the less likely they respond (often as they start doing something else, even just short and miss the action to take)

wendytseng · Answer

Thanks for bringing this topic up!  @andy_s and I have been trying to come up with ways to engage users in the new remote format.  We have done exercises and polls using WebEx.  They have worked well for some audiences but not all.  Polls are still intimidating for some users (despite being in an anonymous format)...and / or perhaps not interesting enough to respond to.   Perhaps there is no incentive to respond?

We would like to hear what others are doing as well.

Some of the questions we have asked include:

* What city/state are you located in?
* How many years have you used JMP?
* What would you like to learn today?
* What was your favorite topic from the session today?  
* [Responding to exercise questions]
* What is TV show or food is getting you through the lockdown?