As conferences become more interactive, and audiences demand experiences over lectures, new technology for public speakers will take a front row seat. This is also true for sponsorship, and sponsors are asking for programs that are customized to fit their needs.

Speakers can integrate technology into their presentations before, during and after to give their sponsors the best return on investment for their sponsorship dollars. Here are some ideas of new technology for speakers:

 

“For meeting and event speakers, there’s so much new technology out there, that choosing the right path can be frustrating, time-consuming and expensive. However, the reality is, if you don’t tap into a strong mobile presence, you’ll lose valuable data and interaction with your audience. They expect it, they have their smartphones in hand, and they’re ready to be reminded that attending your session/event was more than worth their time and money.

Our #1 tech recommendation for speakers? Invest in (or ask your sponsor to invest in) a smart, well-designed, and easily operable app.

Whether you’re planning an international conference or regional corporate meeting, there is an overwhelming amount of information out there. The trick is, how do you make sure you’re gathering it efficiently while equally focusing on the content you’re delivering, ROI for before, during and after the event, and in-session attendee participation?

All event apps help speakers do at least one of those things, but in order to make a sound investment, you need technology that helps you achieve all three simultaneously. Here’s what we tell speakers to look for themselves or ask for from event planners (whether they choose our app or not):

  • An app that tracks user behavior as it happens and gathers critical data for future outreach
  • An app that promotes unique ROI for the speaker (e.g., Arcivr extends the life of sponsorship/speaker dollars (or internal promotions) through ongoing interactive ads).
  • An app that allows you to easily and efficiently access the backend so you can adjust your engagement efforts in real time, based on the behavioral data you’re receiving.

And if your choices don’t provide all three benefits, you’re (or the event planner is) wasting your money.
Lesley Smith
Content Strategist
 
The one-stop app for events,
tours and festivals.

“I am the founder of the Manhattan Destination Marketing Company Shackman Associates and I am an expert in running major corporate meetings that often include speakers.


We are seeing new ways customized geo- and private technologies are improving speaker-driven corporate meetings:

1. Interactive private technology: less tweeting and more networking.

While there is continuing debate on how to use social media and texting during business components at meeting, we are seeing a trend that creates a hyper-intelligent, private system to that increases face-to-face interaction.

The key is to provide speakers with more control than ever over questions, answers and even who gets asked the questions.

With this kind of technology, attendees can now ask unlimited questions, and speakers and moderators can quickly filter out ones that don’t make sense or disrupt the flow. Furthermore, because speakers can clearly see the questions being asked, they do not get lost among the noise of status updates.

2. Turn-key apps manage registration, help attendees network prior to arriving, optimize speaker sessions, geofence off-site after-hours opportunities, and create a platform for continued engagement after the meeting ends. For speakers, these apps provide a look at who is coming to the event. Speakers and attendees can conduct private chats and connect via LinkedIn.

3. We are also seeing an opportunity to run meetings without requiring attendees to download apps that might work differently on the iPhone versus a Galaxy.

Karen Shackman
Shackman Associates New York
9 East 45th Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10017
www.shackmanny.com

 

 

“Making the most of a presentation by turning it into a conversation that everyone feels comfortable engaging in. Two technologies that are game changers in audience engagement: 1) sli.do (www.sli.do) and 2) Google Slides Q&A (https://blog.google/products/docs/slidesqa/). These technologies let the audience ask questions during your presentation while the question is fresh on their mind. It allows people to ask questions who would normally fear the attention of the crowd. More interestingly, it lets the crowd vote on questions. So the most popular questions get voted to the top. Once the presentation is over, you can engage with the audience by answering the questions they really want to know.

I used sli.do as a guest lecturer to undergrads at UT Austin. They were surprised when I started the presentation by asking them to keep their phones on through the presentation. Out of 83 students I had 81 active participants, that asked 58 questions, and placed 394 votes on those questions. At the very beginning of the presentation I had a poll to get the audiences feedback on what area they were most interested in so that I could apply my slide information to the topic they wanted to hear about. Almost like you choose your own adventure book. I like this technology because I don’t like speaking, but I enjoy having conversations.”
Robert C McKee
Esq, MSTC, CIPP/US
512-580-9159
www.USPrivacyLaw.com


“Beamium is browser-based platform to share presentations online. They way it works is quite simple, you just upload your slides as a PDF or images on Beamium and are instantly able to share them live with your audience. You just have to share a link (in case of a meeting) or an 8 digit ID (in case of a live speech) and all the viewers will be able to join the presentation instantly on their web browsers. Since it is browser-based, it works on any device as long as there is an internet connection. This means speakers can present even from their smartphones and new members joining a meeting can just join directly from their preferred device. Since there is no download, installation or registration required, joining a presentation can be done in a matter of seconds, without even knowing the software.

Moreover there are several additional features like a laser pointer to mark details, a zoom in option, a download switch, comments, the possibility to mark your favorite slides and many more. Finally the tool also provides you with smart analytics after each presentation and it can also be shared online embedded on webpages or as a link and capture leads for you by requesting a verified email address for download or after a certain slide.”

 

Michael Steinberg

Business Development

Slideflight GmbH

Amalienstraße 62

80799 Munich

Tel    +49 89 381 535 931

Mail   michael.steinberg@beamium.com

Web  www.beamium.com

“I work for Splento, a photography on demand company. Event professionals use our service when they need professional, reliable, photography, at a fair price and then their photographs expertly retouched and delivered within 48 hours of their event.
Our new feature: ‘Live Images’ allows our clients to share the highlights of their event as and when they happen with their online audience. The way we do this, is we have our large team of professional retouchers on-hand to edit the photographs straight after they’ve been taken and upload them to an online gallery which we create for the client so that they can use them for social media and other online content during the event. We’ve found this worked tremendously well for Art Market Minds as it increased their engagement rates during their event who used it during the Art Business Conference by 500%. Pitch@Palace also found an increase in engagement rates when using our Live Images feature.”
Splento
020 3318 6969

One Response to “New Technology for Public Speakers”

  1. Craig Hadden (@RemotePoss) says:

    Fascinating stuff, Julie! I’d not heard of many of these.

    I especially liked the idea of people being able to vote on audience questions. That brings interaction and Q&A to a whole new level!

    You might be interested in this post on 3 top tips for a modern talk, the 1st of which is to use mobile well. (I’d be delighted to hear your thoughts, and related links are always welcome.)


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