I agree that mobile devices offer a far less intrusive and organic way to provide feedback to speakers as well as to provide brainstorming input. Your point about room setup is spot on. I’ve done meetings in which folks were provided with iPod Touches. You just needed a wireless hub and the Touches. They held their charge for the entire day so you didn’t need any wires run throughout the room. The room could be laid out to create the most dynamic participant environment rather than to accommodate technology.

We were able to prioritize and categorize items with the software we used which created a more robust meeting environment. That said screen real estate is an issue which must be taken into account. In some cases the demands of the session and the amount of information being generated make it more appropriate to use laptops.

As always, carefully planning your meeting and knowing its objectives and likely outcomes will allow you to pick the right tools to ultimately obtain the results you want.

Mike

Thanks for the post and the ideas. I like both the “Tweet the Meet” and sms concept. There are many, many new and innovative ways to bring mobile devices productively into meetings. They don’t always have to be the first thing we turn off when we enter a meeting room.

Mike

Nice Article. The ipod applications seem to be really coming on strong.

I have seen mobile technologies used in 5 different ways for collaboration at events:
(1) Audience Response
(2) Speaker Q&A
(3) Idea Collection
(4) Brainstorming
(5) Backchannel Communication

The Speaker Q&A results that I have seen with mobile devices are really powerful. Speakers are getting many more questions than they could have otherwise received and answered with the “roving microphone” system. People are typing in questions when they think of them rather than waiting. Also, since the questions are electronic – people are posting the Q&A responses on intranets, etc.

For the Brainstorming and Idea Collection tools, the handhelds are good to let people input ideas either during a session or throughout the day. Though, one challenge that I see is in the presentation layer and screen size. It is much easier to look at lots of ideas from others on a laptop. Also, I have not seen any applications (yet) where the audience can categorize the ideas on the mobile devices. This step still seems to work better on laptops.

Another benefit of the mobile devices – you can use them in Auditorium style seating arrangements. With Laptops, you are stuck with round table formats or computer classrooom style.

-Sam