How JAM Involved 600 Participants in Its Q&A Sessions

JAM is a leading product conference to share the stories behind great products. Every year, it brings together hundreds of product managers and designers eager to hear lessons from some of the biggest brands around, including Uber, Netflix and Google.

The team wanted to create an environment where the participants could learn from world-class speakers facing the same challenges as them. With this goal in mind, they built in Q&A sessions that offered enough space for such interaction.

To involve everyone in the discussion, the team swapped the microphones for Slido. As a result, they managed to engage a whopping 70% of the audience in the conversation.

Replacing mics with Slido to involve everyone

When JAM first started in 2015 with 150 participants, the organizers were using mics to take questions from the audience. They soon realized it was fairly difficult to manage.

A lot of people were raising their hands at the same time and the volunteers had to run around the room. Plus, only a small number of people got to participate, noted Mathilde.

As JAM grew to 600 people, it became even more important for the organizers to collect the most relevant questions from the audience. With a 20-min Q&A slot for two speakers, they wanted to make sure the session was as worthwhile as possible.

At the same time, they were looking for a way to give everyone in the room a voice, as shy folks usually remained silent during the Q&A.

At events, the majority of people aren’t comfortable asking questions in front of a crowd – especially if that crowd contains people at the top of their field, Mathilde explained. That’s why they decided to use Slido.

With Slido, the participants could send their questions for the speakers at any time during the talks and upvote others’ questions. The MC reviewed the questions on his iPad as they came in, then asked the most popular ones during the Q&A.

Rewarding the best contributors

Apart from giving everyone a chance to ask their questions, the organizers also gave those who asked the most meaningful questions a chance to win a book.

Every year, our sponsor gave us 10 books to give away to our attendees and we just thought this could be a nice way to incentivize them to ask questions.

So at the end of the day, the 10 people who asked the most upvoted questions on Slido got rewarded with quality product books.

Rewarding the attendees on stage is a nice way to break the flow of the conference and remind everyone in the audience that it’s about them. So it’s not just we have talks, talks, talks and that’s it, noted Mathilde.

The result: Engaging 70% of the audience

Slido empowered everyone in the room to participate in the Q&A sessions. By letting people upvote their favorite questions, JAM made the Q&A much more relevant.

About 70% of the participants became active on Slido and submitted over 500 questions. Adding an extra motivation to ask questions enhanced the attendees’ experience and helped them stay engaged with the talks throughout the event.