Two types of polling aided moderators and enlightened the audience at last week’s Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference, which Modern Media helped produce. With the results of a 1,000-person poll in hand, the moderators could challenge some of the statements made on stage by speakers. And the use of an audience response system (ARS) enabled instant feedback from those in attendance.
The polling firm of Penn, Schoen & Berland completed an exclusive survey of more than 1,000 Americans about their views regarding the environment for The Wall Street Journal just before the event. There were some surprising results, such as how little Americans said they would spend to go green, how few knew about things such as carbon trading that could become huge issues in Congress, and their misunderstandings about the true cost of various kinds of alternative energy.
The moderators, three editors from the Journal, worked with us to show those slides at appropriate moments during conversations on stage with industry experts and leaders, primarily CEOs. The ARS system then let us compare the views of the audience with that of the public.
By the way, these were the only slides used in the entire conference. That’s because the slogan for ECO:nomics is “No PowerPoint. No Pontificating. No Hot Air.”
While numbers and statistics generally can be deadly boring when flashed on screen during a conference presentation, they provided insight and occasional amusement at this event.
