Keeping colleagues and prospects engaged in your meetings is a common challenge. Through chat, breakout rooms, whiteboards, high quality video and more, Acrobat Connect Pro enables you to create high-impact online sessions. However, the distractions of upcoming summer activities and vacations may make it even more difficult for you to get your audience’s attention in the first place. So it is even more important to begin your meetings with highly engaging and interactive content.
Keeping colleagues and prospects engaged in your meetings is a common challenge. Through chat, breakout rooms, whiteboards, high quality video and more, Acrobat Connect Pro enables you to create high-impact online sessions. However, the distractions of upcoming summer activities and vacations may make it even more difficult for you to get your audience’s attention in the first place. So it is even more important to begin your meetings with highly engaging and interactive content.
I like having a lobby area in my Acrobat Connect Pro meeting rooms so that I can easily share engaging content while my audience waits for me to begin my presentation. I change the content based on the audience. For example, when there will be many participants who are newer Connect Pro audiences, I include “how-to” tutorials, links to resources, and customer success videos. If I want input from the audience to so that I can tailor what I cover in my based on their preferences or interests, I include polls for them to answer while we wait to get started.
According to Tom Rath in his book Vital Friends: The People You Can’t Afford To Live Without, camaraderie among work colleagues increases productivity. So, for some of my regular meetings with internal participants, I include entertaining photos or videos just to get the team talking and to foster a sense of community. More often than not, I load a Connect Collaboration Builder SDK application into my lobby. There are many great applications available on the Connect Exchange, but Connect PRoshambo is my favorite. With Connect PRoshambo, you can bring the in-person experience to your online meeting by enabling any two meeting participants to play Roshambo (aka Rock, Paper, Scissors) within Connect Pro.
I find it to be a great way to keep an audience entertained while waiting for others to join the meeting. It also adds a fun, yet competitive, spirit to meetings which ultimately leads to higher productivity. Once people are active and involved participants in meetings, they are more likely to continue to collaborate and remain engaged.