I have attended many team building workshops and seminars that were conducted by different members of senior staff of my employer.  This past quarter, I was involved in the preparation aspect because my boss was the speaker for the quarter.

She told me to think out-of-the-box about how the employee workshops could be taken to a new level.  I searched on the Internet for "seminar tools" and "workshop tools" and read about what is being done with the projector to inform the attendees.   I remembered hearing from my friend that works at a local bar on the weekends that his boss just bought a texting entertainment software called FireText.  They display text messages on their screens and also can show live voting results on the screens.

So I showed my boss the FireText website and we tried the free demo and loved it!  My boss showed it to her boss and the company bought two packages since there are times where two events are going on at the same time.  I was in charge of being the administrator during the workshops my boss conducted and two seminars run by her boss.

What we do is give the audience the number of a cell phone we connect to the laptop running FireText, and tell them to text their questions, comments, voting choices, and poll answers to the phone number.  During the seminars I posted the appropriate texts to the screen to be displayed and addressed.  My boss also asked multiple choice and true/false questions about our company.  I was able to change the screen template from being text to screen right to the polling results!

Now, everyone on the senior management team has incorporated the use of FireText in their presentations to employees and our customers!  My boss received a recognition award for this whole process.  I know she understands that I am the main reason why we are using FireText.  Hey, you know what they say "You know you are doing your job well when you make your boss look good!".