Engaging a room with live polls and audience Q&A
When to launch a poll, how to moderate questions, what to put on screen: the method for getting a room involved without losing the thread of the session.
Updated October 2026 · All guides
To get a room involved, prepare three or four interactions per hour, no more, and launch the first within the first five minutes. The audience answers from their phones by scanning a QR code on screen. Moderate questions before showing them, and keep them anonymous when the topic is sensitive.
Step by step
Prepare interactions in advance
Write the polls before the session, in the order you will launch them. On stage, you will only have to move to the next one.
Launch the first one early
An easy question within the first five minutes teaches the room how to answer. The next ones then get many more responses.
Make access obvious
Show a QR code and a short web address on screen. Nobody should have to install an app or create an account to vote.
Choose anonymous or named
Anonymity brings out the difficult questions, especially at internal events. Named answers are useful when one vote per person must count, as in a quiz with a leaderboard.
Moderate the questions
Give the question queue to someone other than the speaker. They group duplicates and send the ones worth answering to the screen.
Show the results
A result on screen gets the discussion going again. Think about the speaker’s screen too, so they can see the questions without turning around.
The most common mistakes
- Running ten polls in a row: the room stops answering by the fourth.
- Showing questions unmoderated in a room of several hundred people.
- Using an engagement poll for an official vote: it does not prove who voted for what.
Doing it with LiveEvent
In LiveEvent, seven formats (poll, Q&A, quiz, word cloud, ranking, reactions, chat) are prepared in order and run in sequence with one button. The audience answers from the event page, and results appear on the room’s screen or over the live video.
Frequently asked questions
- Does the audience need an account to vote?
- No. By default people vote without an account, one vote per browser. You can ask for a nickname, or limit voting to signed-in participants.
- Can questions be anonymous?
- Yes, and it is set interaction by interaction: anonymous, nickname or signed-in participant.
- Can these polls be used for a general meeting?
- To consult the room, yes. For a statutory vote that must prove who voted for what, you need a certified voting tool.