DSA Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 I am coordinating a medium sized AGM at university (perhaps about 400 people). The client wondered if there is a way of speeding up and increasing the accuracy of the voting. At the moment, people vote by raising their hand, and when it is not obvious a manual count takes place. This obviously takes quite a while. Can anyone think of a better system? (given that there is not much money available for this). The current way may indeed be the best way of doing it, but I said that I would look into it. Thanks,David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 I doubt that you'll find anything more sophisticated on a minimal budget... One thing we have used (I work in a University IT department) is a thing called "Personal Response System", or PRS. Each student is given a device which looks a bit like a remote control handset, and they use this to "feed back" to the lecturer, with results being displayed in real-time. It's a bit like the "ask the audience" thing on "Millionaire". We have used them in venues accomodating several hundred people. I'm not suggesting that it would be cost-effective to buy one of these systems just for your application, but if you already had one within your institution, it may be possible to re-deploy it..... http://www.gtcocalcomp.com/interwriteprs.htm Bruce. Edit: or maybe some sort of "voting via SMS" system? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DSA Posted January 11, 2006 Author Share Posted January 11, 2006 Yes it sounds like that would be a bit out of the question in this instance, but would be an ideal solution. I guess its counting hands then! Will just have to think of a way of doing that quicker and a bit more precisely. David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 Not entirely seriously, how about a "clapometer", just like "Opportunity Knocks"? Or am I showing my age again? On second thoughts, perhaps a "clapometer" with a student audience might have a completely different meaning..... :unsure: Bruce. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Modge Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 Well if your going down that route: audience mike and a Vu meter :unsure: cheer for your favourite! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Dave Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 There are several companies who hire voting systems. One's that come to mind are IML 01428 727476Group Dymanics 020 8991 9559Brahler ICS 01223 411 601 HTH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Locksmith Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 Having been chief teller a couple of times for this kind of meeting, I have also thought about ways to improve it on a small budget. I'm afraid you could be stuck with manual counting of hands. One way we speeded things up was to have a number of tellers each with their own specific area to count. They each report back to the chief teller with their count and a calculator gives the result quite quickly.Sorry, but that's the best we came up with Dave J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris.santry Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 Would SMS voting be viable? A GSM modem and a bit of programming know-how is all you need I'm sure you could program out repeated voting etc. The only issue I can see is whether people would actually want to spend 10p x many times through this meeting to vote? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Locksmith Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 Would SMS voting be viable? A GSM modem and a bit of programming know-how is all you need A potential problem would be 'flooding' where there is a large amount of data coming in and the phone or software is unable to cope. What if a message got delayed for a few minutes during a crucial vote? Just my £0.02 Dave J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 completely , but we've recently done the tech for a couple of student AGMs which were split across 2 sites, 5 miles apart, with a videoconf link between them.... Worked well - at least in the technical sense! Bruce. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henny Posted January 12, 2006 Share Posted January 12, 2006 I cannot rember what the system but I have seen a system in use where every member of the aduance has a paddle/flag one side green one side red, there is a cam somewhere nere the stage looking accross the whole aduance, this is connected to a pc and when asked the pc tells you the % of red/green ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DSA Posted January 12, 2006 Author Share Posted January 12, 2006 this is connected to a pc and when asked the pc tells you the % of red/greenA bit like on ready steady cook then! Anyhow, I believe the system of counting last year was as Dave says above, with lots of counters each with a specific area. Whilst a solution, I think many (perhaps most) people would object to having to pay to cast a vote at an AGM. Thanks for the ideas,David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisD Posted January 12, 2006 Share Posted January 12, 2006 You could use a combinaton of SMS voting and internet voting. Those with laptops/pdas etc could bring them and log on to the local (wifi) intranet and vote that way. Being a university, it probably wouldn't be too hard to find a server and a wifi access point for the venue but it would depend how many laptops were available. All without laptops could text their votes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DSA Posted January 12, 2006 Author Share Posted January 12, 2006 And by the time they have fiddled around with their phones and PDAs, we could have done a manual count twice over... I think the manual system has it. David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TommyToad Posted January 13, 2006 Share Posted January 13, 2006 We use the tickets as votes, still have to count them in the end, but it works for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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