Poll Everywhere

I witnessed the excitement of Poll Everywhere, an inexpensive audience response system, when I attended the MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize and the MIT $100k last week. The live interactive text messaging polling service had people captivated and engaged as the audience eagerly watched the percentages on the bar chart fluctuate as votes poured in from phones to determine the crowd favorite and who would win $10,000 (Covalent Solar won). Suddenly, the host had to move on with his presentation and announced that the chart would be back up in a few minutes. The audience suddenly turned into an angry mob screaming for the service to be brought back up; they wanted to know who would win the prize and if they had voted for the team that was everyone else’s favorite too. They were too eager to know and it drove them crazy. They loved it.
 
It’s ironic that the polling service that is supposed to help determine a favorite actually becomes the crowd’s favorite itself.Continue Reading...