A recent Great Demo! Workshop participant had a terrific suggestion to both increase interactivity and to make sure that participant names are captured correctly in Remote Demo and presentation situations: have the participants enter their own names on a seating chart.
This works particularly well when individual audience members or small groups are in disparate locations.
Prepare a simple seating chart before the meeting, with sufficient space for all of the expected participants. This can be as simple as a blank Word document or as elegant as a mock-up of a conference table with chairs (I lean towards the former!).
As you begin your web session, pass control to the audience and ask each person to type in their name and job title. This ensures that name spelling is correct – another nice advantage. Additionally, it forces people to be interactive – a refreshing change from a typical introductions segment!
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