Wordly推出受众参与工具，为活动策划者提供实时观众洞察

Wordly, which blazed a trail in the meetings industry by launching an AI-based simultaneous translation and captioning solution now used by leading industry associations such as MPI, PCMA and IMEX Group, has expanded its offering by launching its Audience Engagement capability.

The tool builds on the Silicon Valley-based company’s flagship software by allowing attendees to respond to dialogue in real time, creating measurement tools for organizers to assess the success of presentations nearly instantaneously. Wordly said the new product broadens its set of tools supporting the entire event lifecycle, from pre-event preparation and live presentations to post-event content management.

[Related: Event Translation Software Wordly Bridges Language Gap at MPI WEC]

Audience Engagement allows attendees to interact directly with the content as a presentation unfolds, so business event planners don’t have to rely on post-event surveys, participation in polls or using cameras to track and analyze biometric data. The technology can be utilized via mobile devices such as cell phones, which makes it especially valuable for in-person meetings and events.

 “The future of events isn’t just about reaching more people, it’s about understanding what engages them,” said Wordly Founder and CEO Lakshman Rathnam. “Audience Engagement helps attendees capture meaningful insights, gives speakers feedback on what resonates and provides organizers with a clear picture of the value their event delivered. As the industry moves beyond measuring attendance alone, the ability to understand and act on audience engagement will become a critical part of creating more impactful events.”

Worldly said the new offering capitalizes on the need for meeting and event organizers to capture information that demonstrates ROI and is especially valuable because it collects data during presentations, such as what topics have generated the most interest, moments when attendees connected most with a speaker’s message and what information they deemed valuable enough to share with their organizations.

[Related: Measures of Success: Determining ROI, ROO, ROE]

How Wordly’s Audience Engagement Works

According to Wordly, Audience Engagement’s functionality is as follows:

• Audience Engagement is built around attendees following along with a presentation via live captions and translations on their mobile devices.  
• Attendees can react to any statement using emojis that are pinned to sentences in the live-caption stream.
• Attendees can highlight interesting passages and clip and save important takeaways without having to switch to another application.
• At the conclusion of a session, attendees can export their saved highlights and notes in their preferred language.

Wordly said Audience Engagement’s beauty is in its simplicity, especially for meeting and event planners, because the experience does not require attendees to create accounts or log in, as it works alongside the company’s existing translation and captioning capabilities via a QR code or link, with no additional audiovisual equipment, specialized hardware or complicated integrations required.

For business event organizers, the Wordly Dashboard provides an aggregate view of audience engagement via the following information:

• Number of attendees
• How many attendees participated
• Which languages were used
• The overall attendee sentiment of a session

Organizers can also analyze when audiences were most engaged and the types of interactions taking place, from likes and dislikes to saved content, questions and ideas. All of the data is aggregated, with individual responses anonymized to protect privacy. While the event organizer is the only person with access to the data, the results can be shared internally or with the speaker for each session.

[Related: You Don’t Need Interpreters at Meetings Anymore—This A.I. Language App Translates for You]

Audience Engagement allows planners to evaluate individual sessions immediately after their completion instead of waiting exclusively for speaker evaluations to be completed and submitted, resulting in the ability to rapidly modify subsequent sessions.  

Wordly said practical applications could include associations using the information to determine what educational topics to focus on at future conferences or corporate meeting planners being able to better understand how employees respond to leadership messages, training sessions or company-wide announcements. The capability also allows speakers to modify their presentations to better serve the interests of their audience.

Rathman said that connecting attendee interactions to specific session moments gives organizers a more immediate and detailed perspective on what topics and ideas are resonating with an audience, which translates into morerobust and rapid ROI reporting.

“Organizers need to create experiences that are accessible, engaging and worth the investment while demonstrating what messages audiences resonate with,” Rathnam said. “Technology that helps connect participation with meaningful outcomes will be increasingly important to the future of the industry.”

Attendee Privacy Concerns

While attendee engagement measurement has become a key ROI strategy for business events, concerns about privacy exist.

Because Audience Engagement does not use sensors and artificial intelligence to analyze facial expressions or eye and other physical movements, Wordly said it may provide a more comfortable alternative for attendees who are wary of being monitored during an event without their consent. Attendees choose whether to react to a statement, highlight a passage or save a note and that individual activity is not identified in the Organizer Dashboard.

Because of the ability to highlight and save information as it is presented, attendees can retain that specific information instantly and share it post-event with colleagues or for their own records.

“An event should be valuable long after the session ends,” Rathnam said. “When attendees can capture the ideas that matter to them and speakers can better understand which messages resonate, the experience becomes more useful for everyone involved.” 

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About the author

Tyler Davidson is the vice president and chief content director for Meetings Today, which publishes the meetings industry trade magazine Meetings Today as well as MeetingsToday.com, various newsletters, webinars, the in-person Meetings Today LIVE! Hosted-buyer events and other meetings and events industry B2B channels.

Tyler has covered the travel trade for nearly 35 years.  In his role with Meetings Today, which recently won the prestigious FOLIO: Eddies Award for best magazine issue, Tyler leads the editorial team on its mission to provide the most in-depth meetings content in the industry. Previously, he worked as the Asia, Canada, Pacific Northwest and Western U.S. editor at Travel Weekly magazine and TravelAge West. Before joining the dual editorial staff producing destination sections for Travel Weekly and TravelAge West, Tyler was the Africa, Israel, Middle East, Switzerland and Pacific Northwest editor at TravelAge West. He also undertook general news and feature assignments while working at the magazines. 

Besides reporting on the travel trade, Tyler has covered the real estate industry, held various editorial positions at the San Francisco-based national satire magazine The Nose, wrote freelance technology industry pieces and covered the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders for a bilingual newspaper in San Francisco. He has a B.A. in Journalism from San Francisco State University, where he worked in various editorial capacities on its award-winning student magazine, Prism. 

Contact: [email protected]