How to Energize a Conference With Group Polls

TL;DR

Start a large conference session with simple, low-pressure questions that invite everyone to respond loudly, then shift to stand-up prompts that reveal the group’s shared experiences and differences. Rives uses humor, rapid participation, visible polling, and audience recognition to energize roughly 2,000 attendees at the RSA Conference 2019 afternoon keynote session.

Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back Reeves. Good afternoon. Welcome to the afternoon session. To kick things off and to harness the energy of this room, we are going to try something we're calling speed date for, like, 2,000 people, okay? Now, if you've never been on a speed date, it's an encounter designed to get people to get to know each o... Read More

Key Insights

• The opening activity is designed as a speed date for roughly 2,000 conference attendees, using fifteen questions to help participants learn more about one another and understand the composition of the room.
• Loud audience reactions are used as informal polling data, with Rives encouraging attendees to answer instinctively, express strong opinions, and create enough noise to reveal which option appears more popular.
• The first five questions are framed as choices on which reasonable people may disagree, covering food preferences, toilet-paper orientation, imagined superpowers, hunter or gatherer identity, and a preference for good or interesting events.
• Humor is a central participation tool, as shown by the deliberately absurd question about fighting one horse-sized Helen Mirren or 100 duck-sized Helen Mirrens, which Rives calls a palate cleanser.
• The final ten prompts replace shouted preferences with visible participation, asking attendees to stand quickly whenever a personal statement applies so everyone can observe different groups within the audience.
• Conference newcomers receive explicit recognition, with first-year RSA Conference attendees standing while the rest of the audience welcomes them, revealing that rookies make up a noticeable portion of the room.
• Personal identity and life experience become visible through prompts about gender, social-media use, stepparenting, great-grandparents, broken bones, heartbreak, immigration, birthplace, and birthdays.
• The exercise closes by recognizing attendees born from March 1st through March 7th after the narrower March 6th prompt, allowing the session to end the activity with a collective birthday greeting.

Questions & Answers

Q: How can a speaker energize a large conference audience?

A speaker can energize a large audience by beginning with simple questions that require immediate, low-pressure responses. Rives asks attendees to shout, applaud, and choose between playful alternatives before moving to stand-up prompts. Humor, brisk pacing, visible participation, and recognition of specific audience groups help transform roughly 2,000 people from passive listeners into active participants.

Q: What questions did Rives use for the audience poll?

Rives begins with five preference questions: unlimited sushi or unlimited tacos, toilet paper positioned over or under, flight or invisibility as a superpower, identifying as a hunter or gatherer, and preferring good things or interesting things to happen. He also adds a humorous bonus involving one horse-sized Helen Mirren or 100 duck-sized Helen Mirrens.

Q: How did the conference speed-date activity work?

The activity uses fifteen questions to help roughly 2,000 attendees reveal information about themselves as a group. Participants first respond loudly to either-or choices without overthinking them. They then stand when personal statements apply to them. The combined shouting, applause, standing, and observation provide an immediate picture of audience preferences, identities, backgrounds, and shared experiences.

Q: Why did Rives ask the audience to answer loudly?

Rives says that greater volume and stronger opinions will make the activity work better and provide better data about the group. He first establishes a baseline level of noise by asking attendees to imagine a year without threat actor activity and having all their shares vest that day. Later, he interprets competing audience reactions as informal preference results.

Q: What did the stand-up prompts reveal about the audience?

The stand-up prompts reveal several dimensions of the audience, including first-time RSA Conference attendance, identification as a woman, absence from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, stepparent status, memories of a great-grandparent, broken bones, heartbreak, immigration, Northern California origins, and birthdays. Each prompt makes a different personal experience or identity visible across the room.

Q: How did Rives use humor during the keynote opening?

Rives uses exaggeration, playful commentary, and an absurd hypothetical to keep participation light. He jokes about security professionals preferring good events, describes people without four major social platforms as unicorns, and says any combination of Helen Mirrens would defeat the audience. He also jokes that someone who has broken many bones may be too dangerous to join socially.

Q: What social media platforms were included in the poll?

The social-media prompt names four platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Attendees are asked to stand only if they are not on any of those four services. Rives reacts by calling the standing participants unicorns, describing them as beautiful and proud, and noting that many of them wave emphatically while being recognized by the room.

Q: How did Rives recognize different groups in the room?

Rives asks qualifying attendees to stand and frequently invites everyone else to applaud them. Conference rookies are welcomed, women applaud their visible presence, stepparents receive recognition for a difficult role, immigrants receive applause, local Northern Californians are thanked for hosting, and attendees born from March 1st through March 7th receive a collective birthday greeting at the activity’s conclusion.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Rives opens the Wednesday afternoon keynote session at RSA Conference 2019 with a group activity described as speed dating for roughly 2,000 people. He asks attendees to respond instinctively and loudly, explaining that stronger opinions and greater volume will produce better information about the people gathered in the room.

• The activity begins with five playful preference questions about sushi or tacos, toilet-paper orientation, flight or invisibility, hunting or gathering, and good or interesting experiences. Audience noise provides an informal poll. A humorous question about fighting different configurations of Helen Mirren serves as a transition to the next section.

• The final ten prompts ask people to stand when a statement applies to them. These prompts identify conference rookies, women, people without four named social platforms, stepparents, people who remember a great-grandparent, people with broken bones or broken hearts, immigrants, local attendees, and people celebrating birthdays that week.