The next (works) meeting is coming up and you have to plan the topics and prepare the agenda? Then you have probably already spent a few hours and nights thinking about what is on everyone's mind and what should definitely be included on the agenda or in the event programme. One option is to ask all employees or members or potential participants and ask for their feedback by e-mail. The flood of feedback - usually via other channels such as telephone, WhatsApp, intranet or social media - can easily overwhelm even the best planners. But it doesn't have to be that way. With TEDME, you can solve both the flood of feedback and the prioritisation of topics. In this blog post, we show you how to master this.
Step one: Collect topics - with the TEDME Q&A module
Are you familiar with TEDME's Q&A module? You can use it to let your event participants type questions into the session chat and have them rated by all other participants using the popular smileys. You can also moderate the questions, i.e. release them individually. This approach has proven to be very useful for planners who want to check the comments and questions in advance and incorporate the opinions of the entire audience.
In addition to this classic use, however, you can also use the Q&A module to obtain the topic requests of your employees, your community or your members before the meeting. To do this, simply make the link to the Q&A module available to your participants and ask them to enter their questions and requests there. As this module is available in moderated form, you and all co-planners can see the topics submitted - everyone else cannot. This helps you to avoid a critical or destructive atmosphere during the submission phase.
Step two: The editorial revision
Now the editorial revision of the topics submitted for your meeting or event begins. Merge contributions that have been submitted twice and revise the wording here and there. Now would also be an opportunity to delete particularly destructive submissions and not to mirror them back to the participants. The next step is to send the revised list of topics - with exactly the same TEDME link - to your participants and ask them to prioritise the topics.
Step three: Prioritise topics
Let your participants know what you have done with the submissions. This could read something like this: "Thank you very much for the many topics submitted. We have summarised and edited them for you. The resulting list of suggestions for our next event can be found under the same link XYZ. Please rate which of them interest you the most."
In this way, you receive the topics that really interest your audience - both in terms of the variety of topics and prioritisation.
You can use such a procedure for a wide variety of events, for example:
- for employee events
Which topics should we address? What really moves our employees? - at general meetings
What other topics should be on the agenda? - for B2B events
What interests your potential participants? Which workshops should you offer?
Extra tip on the TEDME Q&A module
Particularly in online events and especially in Q&A rounds often result in many more questions than speakers and moderators can answer in the allotted time. If you still want to respond to the wishes and concerns of your audience, you can extend the validity of the TEDME session by a week, for example, and post the answers to all the participants' questions there. True to the motto "Unfortunately, we don't have time today, but if you check back tomorrow, we will have added all the answers for you."
In addition to answering the questions, you can also draw your participants back to your event platform. There you can, for example, once again draw attention to important materials to download or to recordings, next event dates or sponsors displayed.
Conclusion
Q&A sessions are very popular components of events. With digital solutions such as TEDME's Q&A module, you can also derive your topic planning and prioritisation from this and thus actually and very easily take your participants' wishes into account. Try it out for yourself. We will be happy to show you how it works.
