Is Slido Killing Your Event Conversations?

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
July 7, 2025
1 reply
31 views

LeanneM
Participant

Hey everyone,

My sales team has a strong feeling that using Slido for Q&A at our in-person events might be doing more harm than good for audience engagement.

They've noticed that when we ask attendees to submit questions via a QR code before or during a Q&A, people seem less likely to just raise their hand and jump into a live discussion. It feels like it's stifling the organic, spontaneous conversations that naturally emerge when someone verbalizes a question.

Are any of you experiencing this too? Do you find that digital Q&A tools reduce the natural flow of discussion in the room?

If so, how do you work around it? We suspect the moderator's approach is key, but any tips or alternative strategies to encourage more live interaction would be amazing!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences!

Jay from Slido
Community Manager
Forum|Forum|4 months ago
July 9, 2025

Hey @LeanneM 👋

Totally hear where you're coming from and it can be common challenge when introducing a digital tool into in-person events.

A few things that have helped us strike a better balance:

🔄 Blend live and digital Q&A – Encourage hand-raisers and Slido submissions. Your moderators can say something like, “Feel free to raise your hand or pop your question into Slido if you’d rather not speak up.” That way, you’re giving people options and you’re also hearing from the quieter voices.

🎤 Use Slido to warm up the room – Before opening up to live questions, show a couple of top-voted ones from Slido. It gives the room something to react to and often prompts follow-up questions or live discussion.

👀 Keep Slido visible but low-friction – Make sure the QR code is super accessible. Our present mode always displays joining instructions, but to get people into the app early we normally start with an icebreaker poll which gets people comfortable not only using the app but setting the tone for the meeting. You can also download your QR code and display anywhere else you like too.

🧠 Moderator energy really matters – As you guessed, the moderator is important and sets the tone. If they’re open, curious and reactive to both Slido and live input, it invites more people to jump in.

You might also find our latest blog helpful which talks about Intent to Impact and how Slido can help with this.

Curious to hear how others feel about this too 😊

Jay from Slido

J