Frequently Asked Questions

Using in conferences & talks

Kopublik is a feedback tool that harnesses public participation through suggesting questions and voting on each other's questions. It can be used to solicit questions from the audience and make better use of question and answer time in conferences and talks.

Dedicated screen
Laptops as monitors
Longer-term use
Internet / power
Adapting for each session

Dedicated screen

Consensus-voting works best when it has its own dedicated screen. Part of the rationale of having a screen in the space is that it guarantees an audience for posts. Switching back and forth between a slide show and the Kopublik screen is also not particularly effective. Participation can drop substantially when it is not projected, even if participants know that it will be projected in the future.

Laptops as monitors

To keep presenters involved in consensus-voting, it is very important to give them their own personal monitor. If they have their own laptop, they can use that. But generally, it helps to get a monitor somewhere in their field of view so they don't have to turn around to see what questions are being asked. This makes it easy for them to stay aware of what the popular questions are, as well as modulate their responses while they're talking or preparing to talk. If there is a moderator, it is important that they too can see this screen, or have their own screen. We have found that using laptops for this is easy and effective.

Longer-term use

Because your event will almost certainly be everyone's first time using consensus-voting, there will be a period of adaptation to the tool. Opening the discussion on the web beforehand can help participants to get used to it. Audience members typically spend the first session settling into the affordances of consensus-voting and building a better understanding of how to use if effectively. So it works best when you have multiple sessions over which the audience can get used to what consensus-voting is good for.

Internet / power

For consensus-voting to work well, audience members need to have reliable internet access, as well as access to power to keep their laptops charged. While this is good advice for any conference, it is particularly important for consensus-voting to have audience members with charged laptops.

Adapting for each session

In pure discussions, consensus-voting works well as an ongoing repository of questions and comments that updates live, and should be projected for the whole session. In a presentation mode, leaving the Kopublik screen off is sometimes useful, especially for presenters that feel like they're competing with the questions for attention. In this mode, though, it's critical that the Kopublik screen be turned back on for the question period of the presentation.