I had my first experience of Google Moderator at the Web 2.0 Conference the other day. John Battelle used it to CrowdSource questions for his keynote interview with Will Wright.
This seems to me to deliver on the promise of hand held voting devices that were all the rage at events some 8 to 10 years ago. Now the smart phone or laptop is the device. We also have the social-media norms of voting up or down others' questions so that the best can rise to the surface. This function takes it a step beyond just tweeting questions to the moderator.
While according to the shot above, click here to see it in more detail, perhaps only 30 out of the hundreds in the audience were playing (for this round) this looks to me to be the wave of the future.
Another sign of that—this is the technology the White House used last month for President Obama’s online town hall meeting.
As important as it is to increase the value of an event’s Q&A, we also need to go one step further, and to think about the other more creative uses for this kind of tool:
As an example to start the brainstorming in that direction, check out Tip Jar , another Google site that brings the moderator technology to life for everyday advice.
How could you use this type of interaction in your event, your business, or your daily life?
Comments