Doug Bardwell heads up the often challenging role of employee and departmental communications for Forest City Enterprises a real estate company that operates throughout the United States.

He was faced with a challenge – to implement a new audience response system for his annual Leadership Conference. This article looks at his search.

The Search for an Audience Response System.

Doug Bardwell was faced with a challenge – to implement a new audience response system for his annual Leadership Conference.

To generate ideas and develop consensus, Forest City conducts a variety of staff events including an annual Leadership Conference. During each Leadership Conference, approximately 200 Forest City employees representing each of the company’s business units work together to develop, prioritise and establish strategic planning ideas.

For the last three years, Forest City has rented an audience response system to capture the thoughts and opinions of conference attendees. Doug explained, “Audience response systems are ideal for gathering this type of data. The conference is not a scenario where you can rely on a show of hands for a response.”

Their system was not only very expensive, but also extremely complicated, as demonstrated by having to fly in two on-site technicians. The response units were big and bulky, approximately 8 inches long and 3 inches wide. In addition, they had a limited range, only working up to about 75 feet away. In a large auditorium, where the Leadership Conference took place, the attendees in the back rows could not participate as their response units were out of range. Doug said, “We wanted to find a do-it-ourselves system rather than continue to work with our current vendor.” With a price tag of $10,000 per event, the need for two on-site technicians and bulky equipment, there was a strong argument for investigating new audience response options.

While at InfoComm 2005, a conference dedicated to the audiovisual communications industry, Doug researched several audience response systems to find a replacement for the system used at their Leadership Conference. He was looking for a more cost effective, flexible and easy to use solution. He used his time investigating several different vendors, almost all of whom suggested hiring a technician to help Doug learn and operate their audience response systems. Cost effectiveness was not a feature that most of these systems seemed to offer.

After having the opportunity to compare a variety of products, Doug decided that Turning Technologies’ TurningPoint 2006 and ResponseCard solution was the right choice for his company’s needs. One of the most attractive features in the solution was TurningPoint 2006, which installs as a toolbar within PowerPoint. Others factors in Doug’s decision were the 200ft range and the credit card size of the response cards.

Doug was thrilled as he summarised the results of the event. “We looked like real heroes! The audience response system was very good for coming to quick decisions, especially for big groups and gaining consensus. Two hundred people could respond within seconds.”