18 Success Stories from Amazingly Interactive Events

Get inspired by real-life examples for applying
Slido at your meetings and events
18 Success Stories
from Amazingly Interactive Events

From the beginning we have worked closely with
our clients. And we still do. Your ideas have
helped shape our main features and your
feedback pushes us to improve every day.
Not only that. We’re learning from you. A lot.
In the past few years, we have seen the whole
industry take a huge step forward. Live polling
and crowdsourced Q&A have become standard
practice at many meetings and events.
It’s exciting to be part of this evolution.
But as participants get accustomed to using
interaction technology, you often approach us
with the question ‘What’s next? What should we
do to increase interaction beyond Q&A?’.
The truth is that technology is just one piece of
the interaction puzzle.
To improve an event, we need to look at it
holistically. We can only leverage the full
potential of the technology when it’s combined
with well-thought-out meeting design and
masterful moderation.
In other words, the sum of all is greater than the
parts.
Having had the chance to work with some
amazing events and companies, we’ve learned
a lot about meeting design from you.
In this booklet, you will find 18 success
stories from the events and meetings that
brimmed with meaningful interaction. We
hope you’ll find them as inspiring as we did.
Thank you for all the stories. We cannot wait to
learn more from you.
Introduction
Peter Komornik
CEO, Slido

Table of content
Internal events:
External events: 1.
2.
3.
4.
Keynotes
Panel discussions
Audience insights
Participant-driven formats
All-hands meetings
Engaging remote teams
Training sessions
5.
6.
7.

Involve large
audiences in
your keynotes
Keynote sessions at SXSW
often have 1000-2000
people in the audience. The
organizers wanted everyone
to have a chance to
participate.
SXSW
SXSW wanted to make their keynotes as
relevant as possible but with such a diverse
audience present in the room, the only way to
do this was to give the audience a voice.
For example, during a session with the chief
editor of the New York Times on covering the
POTUS, they wanted the chat to be as
transparent as possible.
By using Slido to collect the questions, every
single person had a chance to contribute. Be
that by asking their own questions or upvoting
those from others.
As a result, during a 50 minute session,
they received 186 questions which received
481 likes. The whole audience had an
opportunity to impact the transparent session
and influence the questions that were being
answered onstage.
External events | Keynotes

How to fit Q&A
into a packed
agenda
StartUp Grind had 40
awesome keynote speakers
on their main stage. As a
two day event, this allowed
only 15 minutes per speaker;
nowhere near enough time
to dig deeper or ask
questions.
StartUp Grind
The organizers of StartUp Grind had a great
line-up of speakers but their packed agenda
didn’t leave any time for audience questions.
So, they set up another stage focused mainly
on Q&A where their most popular speakers
could dive deeper into their topics in
additional 30 minute interactive ‘ask me
anything’ sessions.
The audience were able to submit their
questions through Slido after the main stage
sessions to ask and learn more from those
particular speakers.
As a result, those who wanted to find out
more had the opportunity to engage with the
speakers directly and get the answers they
were looking for.
External events | Keynotes

Panel
discussions
External events
2

Allow audience
participation in
your panel
discussions
Often panel sessions focus
fiercely on the dialogue with
the panelists and leave very
little room for audience input.
The Conference Summit
wanted to change that during
their three panel sessions.
Conference Summit
Conference Summit’s event and panel
moderator, Bansri Shah, wanted their
conference delegates to be truly involved and
engaged during their panel sessions.
In order to do this, she started with a poll
focused on the audience’s general opinion of
the panel topic. Crucially, she then asked the
panel speakers to comment on the results
and share their view.
In addition, the speakers answered a mix of
questions crowdsourced from the audience
and those prepared in advance.
As a result, everyone in the room had a
voice, not just the speakers on the panel. By
incorporating these elements into the
sessions, Bansri bridged the gap between the
speaker’s knowledge and what the audience
wanted to take away.
External events | Panel discussions

See if your
panel debate
can change
opinion
At the World Economic
Forum, they wanted to check
the impact of their sessions
on their participants’
opinions.
World Economic Forum
At the beginning of one-hour panel
discussions, they would activate a simple
multiple choice poll.
The topics ranged from ‘Are intelligence
services too powerful or not powerful enough
in a globalised world?’ to ‘Promoting inclusive
growth calls for more emphasis on access to
opportunities and less on redistribution.’.
Once the audience completed the poll, there
was an hour panel discussion before the
same poll questions were asked again at the
end.
As a result, the organizers and speakers
were able to immediately see the impact of
their session. The results varied wildly with
some polls seeing 8% of the vote changing
opinion while another saw opinion change
69%.
External events | Panel discussions

Audience
insights
External events
3

Leverage your
session to
collect qualified
leads
During Pulse 2017, Gainsight
used an interactive session
to present their Customer
Success Maturity Model to
potential customers,
generating leads in the
process.
Gainsight @ Pulse 2017
During a 30 minute session, Gainsight wanted
their 60 person audience to both understand
the five areas of their model and learn how to
apply it at their own company.
They started by sharing the model concepts
before asking the audience to evaluate their
current level with a live poll. By sharing the
results, they added value for the audience by
explaining how to take their business to the
next stage.
At the end of the session, they activated one
final poll for attendees to share their contact
details if they were interested in learning
more.
As a result, 40% of the audience shared
their details. During this short session, they
drove the conversation using real-time data to
make a theoretical session extremely relevant
for the participants.
External events | Audience insights

Generate future
content from
your event data
Festival of Marketing is the
largest global event
dedicated to brand
marketers. By using
technology, they hoped to
create an open dialogue and
make use of the generated
insights.
Festival of Marketing
This conference has over 200 speakers and
4000 participants. In order to ensure an open
dialogue flowed between the two groups,
they encouraged participants to submit
questions through Slido.
This enabled them to generate huge amounts
of data and make sure that the content for
their next event bridged the gap between the
speaker’s knowledge and what the audience
really want to know.
As a result, delegate uptake was very high
with over 2360 questions submitted by 1221
users. With this many questions, the
organizers were able to analyze them,
creating customized content for the next year.
Giving the audience a voice and then adapting
to their requirements, builds a more engaged
group year-on-year.

Get real-time
product
feedback
During Adobe Summit, the
director of one of Adobe’s
Analytics tools wanted to
present new features in an
interactive way while getting
real-time feedback from their
users.
Adobe Summit
An Adobe product director worked with his
team to make a product session dynamic for
the audience and valuable for the
development team behind the product.
While the new features were presented, the
audience provided feedback through an open
text survey that included their name, feature,
and their comments.
After the demos, the director asked the
audience to vote for the feature they found
most useful. Incentivized by some prize
money, they invited two participants onstage
to expand on their survey comments.
As a result, they were able to collect
valuable insights into their new features. By
using open text polls, they had more elaborate
feedback they could analyze. And learning the
best feature from their users helped them
target their product marketing.

Participant
- driven
formats
External events
4

Let the audience
drive the
conversation
The facilitators of the
Exclusively Corporate
sessions at IMEX wanted
their session to fully revolve
around the needs of the
audience.
Exclusively Corporate @ IMEX
The facilitators, Padraic and Patrick, used the
questions feature in order to crowdsource the
biggest issues and questions that the
participants wanted to get answered during
the day.
After having attendees vote up the most
pressing issues, these key topics became the
focus of a World Cafe session.
The participants were split into small groups
where they could discuss and brainstorm the
three different topics.
As a result, the participants left with the
specific information and knowledge that they
were looking for or missing previously. They
could learn from their peers and forge organic
connections based on discussions with
people facing similar challenges as them.
External events | Participant-driven formats

Crowdsource
your conference
sessions live
Thomas Heiser from Focal
Point wanted
2017.Open.Coop delegates
to help define the
programme and co-create
a third of the event.
Focal Point
Pulling together a conference program is an
(educated) guessing game. Of course,
organizers know the industry trends and
source great speakers but ultimately only the
audience know what they really want to
engage with.
At 2017.Open.coop they left a third of the
agenda open. On the first morning, delegates
were invited to use questions to pitch
sessions they wanted to run. The audience
then used Slido to select the sessions they
wanted to be incorporated.
As a result, they had twice as many
pitches as there were spaces. By having the
delegates steer the program development, the
event was much more diverse and engaging.
Crucially, all of the sessions were led by
people passionate about the subject and
attended by an audience who had actively
chosen to take part.

Include the
audience in
pitching events
For startups and investors,
pitching events are
indispensable. They usually
run on a tight schedule that
leaves the audience out of
the conversation. At Google
Demo Day, they wanted to
change that.
Google Demo Day
The first way they involved the audience in the
conversation was allowing them to ask
questions for the 5-minute Q&A sessions.
To help the startups get feedback on the
problems they were trying to solve, they used
polls during the pitches to add another layer
of engagement with the presented ideas.
In addition to the official winner selected by
the judges, the event organizers empowered
the attendees to appoint their people’s
choice. To do that, the organizers created a
poll to vote for the pitching startups.
As a result, they created an event where
everyone played an active role. Participants
were eagerly interacting, asking more than
160 questions throughout the event. And for
the startups, they got real-time feedback on
their ideas through the polls and the people’s
choice award.

All-hands
meeting
Internal events
5

Engage
everyone by
giving them a
voice
This large corporation has
thousands of employees
spread over a number of
locations. All-hands meetings
are a critical tool for them to
involve their employees in the
conversation and keep
everyone on the same page.
Large US Corporation
In the invite for their all-hands meeting, this
large US corporation included their Slido
permanent link so people could start asking
questions before the meeting.
During their one hour session, 30 minutes
was dedicated to Q&A with questions coming
from the audience, by telephone and through
Slido. As they couldn’t possibly address all
210 questions they received, they prepared a
post-event report of the unanswered
questions in order to show appreciation for
their employees’ contributions.
As a result, they gained valuable insight
into the minds of their employees. What’s
more, the organizers didn’t shy away from
approving even the most difficult questions
and by doing so, established a culture of trust
and transparency.
Internal events | All-hands meeting

Find and
acknowledge
your unsung
heroes
A large financial institution,
with over 10,000 employees,
found a way to say thank you
to those team members
whose work isn't instantly
visible but the impact is
significant.
Large Financial Institution
When this company on the US East Coast
wanted to improve morale within their teams,
they used a word cloud poll to acknowledge
their most valuable employees.
By asking “Who was your unsung hero this
month?” they crowdsourced from their
employees to see who has had the biggest
impact on the team that month. By using the
word cloud feature they are easily able to see
the names that stand out.
As a result, the wider team feels
recognized and it builds morale. And
management were able to easily identify
those working hard behind the scenes to
support their colleagues.
Pro tip: Hide the results until the answers
are in so people aren’t influenced by others.

Help your
employees
manage change
This retailer was going
through a lot of structural
changes. They wanted to help
their employees better
manage the transition and
understand why change was
necessary.
Retailer
Most people struggle to adapt to change,
making clear communication more important
than ever.
To enable a smooth transition, this retailer
communicated the big changes in two large
events across the year. To keep employees in
the loop, they supplemented the events with
1-2 smaller sessions per month with
members of the management board.
To ensure employees understood
complicated new processes, the management
ran a series of polls to collect feedback and
encouraged people to raise their concerns by
asking questions.
As a result, management were able to
clarify the changes, remove barriers of fear
and build trust in the process. For the
employees, being involved at every step of the
way, the transition was easier to handle.

Engaging
remote teams
Internal events
6

Come together
as a team to
share highlights
This tech company has grown
500% in 18 months. They
found a way to celebrate their
distributed team’s
achievements from a single
line of code to a huge event in
San Francisco.
Technology SME
This company is split over more than 10
locations and growing rapidly. It’s important
for them to celebrate their achievements and
keep everyone informed with the company
highlights.
To do this, they start their monthly all-hands
with small group discussions, both online and
offline, where they share their personal
highlights for the month.
Everyone posts their highlight as a question
to Slido where they can be upvoted by the
rest of the company. The CEO then briefly
recaps the top voted achievements and gives
recognition to those involved.
As a result, everyone gets to share their
achievement and success while having an
input into what is discussed. This helps to
align each team’s goals and sync on what’s
important.
Internal events | Engaging remote teams

Track happiness
across your
company
This government
department wanted to
check the fulfilment
of their employees.
Government
In order to keep track of how their employees
are feeling, this department created a
two-minute-to-complete satisfaction
barometer which it sends out to all of its
employees each quarter.
It is made up of 10 polls where employees are
asked to rate things like personal excitement,
quality standards and learning and
development and one open text poll where
they can expand on their feelings.
But they don’t stop at having the survey filled
in. During their all-hands meeting, they display
and frankly discuss the results live with
everyone.
As a result, they have created a culture
where feedback is given and acted upon.
Meanwhile, they are constantly listening to
their employees and addressing issues as
they arise.
Internal events | Engaging remote teams

Training
sessions
Internal events
7

Run
time-efficient
training sessions
This global IT company were
running a series of training
sessions for employees with
mixed experiences so they
needed a way to identify
where to focus their attention
in each session.
Global IT Company
At the start of the session, the trainer
activated a Slido poll with the three topics
they’d cover during the session. The question
asked ‘Which topic is most beneficial to you?’
With the results in for that particular group,
the session was divided proportionally
according to the interest in the room. 50% of
their time was dedicated to the most popular
option, 30% to the second and the remaining
time to the least popular option.
As a result, everybody had a chance to
voice their needs. The time was split
democratically, allowing them to dedicate
time where it was needed, making the session
more efficient and worthwhile for the
participants.
Internal events | Training sessions

Boost
understanding
of complicated
topics
As this technology startup is
growing, they found it
necessary to reassess the
roles of their team. It was a
big change for the teams
involved and they needed to
ensure it had been
understood correctly.
Technology Startup
This technology startup’s customer support
team had been handling everything but as
their business grew, they needed to introduce
new roles to split up the responsibilities. This
created a new problem: how to handle
inquiries was no longer black and white.
To ensure everyone was on the same page
with the new responsibilities, they created
polls from real inquiries. They described each
case and then activated a poll with three
different responses. The correct answer was
shared and the group discussed why it
should be this way.
As a result, the new roles were much
clearer for everyone involved, making it easier
to make a quick decision. This allowed the
company to serve their customers better and
for their employees to work more efficiently.

Tailor your
workshop to the
group’s needs
When Red Cross held a
workshop for teenagers, they
wanted to check existing
knowledge and then adjust
their session accordingly to
create a workshop based on
the group’s needs.
Red Cross
To get things going, they started with some
polls to check the existing knowledge level of
the group.
Based on the results of this poll, the
instructors adjusted the content of their
workshop to make it targeted to the group.
Their aim was for the workshop to have the
greatest impact possible. At the end of the
session, they ran the same polls so they could
directly compare the results.
As a result, the instructors were
immediately able to evaluate the results of
the session. As a bonus, with content being
customised for the group, the participants
were pleasantly surprised how much they
learnt from the session.
Pro tip: Duplicate your first polls to save
on setup time.

support@slido.com
blog.slido.com
+1 650 489 9485
Do you want to take
interaction at your
event to the next level?
Contact us for more inspiration!

18 Success Stories from Amazingly Interactive Events

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