What is live polling?

Live polling turns a rhetorical question into a measured one. The speaker asks, the room answers from their phones, and the result appears on screen within seconds.

In practice at an event

The test for whether a poll is worth running is simple: does the result change what happens next? “How many of you have shipped this in production?” works when the speaker branches on the answer. “Which of these three should we cover in the last ten minutes?” works because the room sets the agenda.

What does not work is a poll the speaker reads out and then continues past regardless. Attendees notice within one session, and the response rate on the second poll tells you whether they believed the first one.

One or two per session. Response rates fall steeply after the second, so spend them.

What to look for

Keep options to four; five means scrolling on a phone. Write the poll before the session, because one composed live is a typo on a screen in front of four hundred people. Do not place one in the first two minutes, while people are still arriving.

In a product, check that results display to the room, that a poll can be closed, and that it can be pre-loaded rather than only created live.

How event67 handles it

Attendees answer polls in real time from the session screen, with results visible to the room. Polls sit alongside live Q&A and crowd reactions in the same session view, and there is a polls moderator role in the console for the person running them. Pre-loading the opening session’s poll the night before is the pattern worth setting up.