Q&A with upvotes

The best question, not the loudest voice.

Open Q&A rewards whoever is nearest a microphone and least afraid of a room. Upvoted Q&A rewards the question most people wanted asked, which is almost never the same thing.

How the room decides what gets asked

Anyone can submit, everyone can vote, and the order on screen is the room's own ranking.

  • Submissions are anonymous

    The person with the sharpest question is often the most junior person in the room. Taking the name off the question is what gets it asked at all.

  • Upvotes do the sorting

    Questions rise as they collect votes, so the speaker answers what the audience actually wanted instead of what the first hand up wanted.

  • You stay in control

    Moderate before anything reaches the screen. Approve, dismiss, or hold a question until the right moment in the talk.

  • Nothing is lost

    Questions you did not get to are still in the export, which is usually the most useful feedback an event produces.

24How do we handle reconnects?
11Is there an API?

Where upvoted Q&A earns its place

After a keynote

Ten minutes of Q&A usually means three questions from the same three people. Upvoting turns it into the three questions the room came with.

All hands and town halls

The questions people will not ask in front of leadership are the ones worth answering. Anonymity plus voting is what surfaces them.

Panels

A moderator can pull the top question at any moment instead of improvising, which keeps a panel from drifting.

Workshops and office hours

Collect questions during the session and answer them in ranked order at the end, so time goes to what most people were stuck on.

Questions people ask about Q&A

Can I approve questions before they show?
Yes. Moderation is built in: nothing reaches the big screen until you let it through.
Can people see who asked?
No. Submissions are not attributed on screen, which is the reason the honest questions arrive at all.
Can someone upvote their own question repeatedly?
Each participant gets one vote per question, so a question rises because the room agreed with it.
What if nobody asks anything?
Seed two questions yourself before the session. A Q&A with something already on the board almost always fills up; an empty one often does not.
Do unanswered questions go anywhere?
They stay in the session export, so you can answer them in a follow up email or a blog post.

Keep reading

Word clouds

When you want the room's words rather than its questions.

Q&A at conferences

Running it across a multi track event.

All hands Q&A

Anonymous questions in a room where names carry weight.

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