Many communities and organizations are discovering that the best way to address community issues and to create places where people love to live and work is to involve as many citizens as possible in problem solving and decision making processes. New tools and techniques are available to increase participation and improve the consensus building process. Among the most promising new technologies are "groupware" and keypad voting, which are used to facilitate electronic meetings or "e-Meetings".

Studies have shown that meetings are most effective when there is direct involvement of participants and immediate feedback; e-Meetings offer both of these qualities. In addition, this decision making system encourages equal participation and more effective communication because everyone at a meeting can comment anonymously. No one person or group of people can dominate a discussion, and everyone's opinion is heard. Because feedback is instantaneous, consensus and buy-in for implementation are more easily reached.

How e-Meetings work
e-Meetings use technology to enhance the facilitation and decision making process of both large and small group meetings. Keypad voting alone, or combined with groupware, can be used in brainstorming, critiquing ideas and voting on alternative concepts. Flip charts are augmented or replaced with computerized systems and keypad voting tools. Participants use keypads to input their responses to a series of questions or statements and their responses are quickly fed back to the group for further discussion.

Though e-meeting technology greatly increases the capacity of facilitators, it does not replace them. Skilled meeting designers and facilitators are critical for successfully putting this technology to work.
 
e-Meetings and Keypad Voting Services

PlaceMatters offers the following services associated with keypad polling:

Planning
We work with a community or organization to identify how to use the capacity of the keypad system to maximize its impact and the input received.

Event
We use our key pads and the staff to run the system and facilitate the interface between the meeting leaders, the meeting participants, and the voting. We can also set up the meeting so that participants can generate ideas that would be voted on during the summit.

Follow-up
We work with you to create useful reports from the large amounts of information generated by the meeting.