PULTEVENT
Moderated conference Q&A: 7 setups for panels, keynotes and town halls
The panel has fifteen minutes left and four people on stage. Someone in the aisle is holding a roving mic and a man in a grey jacket has been talking into it for ninety seconds without reaching a question. The moderator has a stack of better questions on her laptop, sorted by how many people in the hall want them answered, and a clear view of which panellist each one is addressed to. She thanks the man, turns to the screen, and reads out the one with the most upvotes.
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A moderated Q&A fixes three familiar problems at once: the loudest person gets the mic, the best questions come from people who would never stand up, and the moderator has no idea what the room actually wants to ask. When questions arrive in writing, with a named addressee and a visible level of support, the last quarter of every session gets sharper.
PULTEVENT's Q&A lives in the Forum interactive section. Attendees open it by QR code or link in the phone browser, without installing anything or creating an account, pick a speaker from the list, type the question and send it. The moderator sorts and approves from a laptop, and the chosen question appears on the projector or LED wall. Everything goes through the server, so it needs internet on the phones and on the laptop.
7 Q&A setups and when to use each
1 Classic keynote Q&A
One speaker, one queue. Questions arrive during the talk, the hall upvotes, and in the last ten minutes the moderator puts the top questions on screen one by one.
How to run it. Tell the audience at the start that questions are open now, not only at the end. The best ones are written while the point is fresh.
The speaker answers what the room wants, not what the person nearest the mic wants.
2 Multi-speaker panel
Four panellists, each question tagged with the person it's for. The moderator filters by speaker to make sure the quiet panellist gets questions too.
How to run it. Put the panellists' names on the list exactly as they appear on the programme, with their company, so people pick the right one.
A balanced panel keeps all four speakers engaged and stops one star from answering everything.
3 Leadership town hall
Employees ask the executive team about pay reviews, restructuring, return to office. Anonymous mode is what makes the difficult questions arrive at all.
How to run it. Agree with leadership beforehand that highly upvoted questions will be answered, even the uncomfortable ones. Hiding them destroys trust quickly.
Internal communications gets an honest picture of what people worry about, ranked by how many share the worry.
4 Expert session with named questions
A professional audience, a regulator or a senior practitioner on stage. Names are required so the speaker can follow up with the person after the session.
How to run it. Ask people to add their company after their name. It gives the speaker useful context for the answer.
Named questions tend to be more precise and lead to conversations at the coffee break.
5 Questions collected during the break
Open the Q&A for the afternoon panel over lunch. By the time the panel starts, the moderator already has a ranked list to open with.
How to run it. Put the QR code on the screens in the lunch area with the panel title and the names of the panellists.
The panel starts with the audience's agenda instead of five minutes of self-introductions.
6 Question feed on screen
Instead of one question at a time, the screen shows a feed of approved questions with their upvote counts. The speaker picks from the feed while the hall watches the list move.
How to run it. Use the feed for relaxed sessions like fireside chats. For a tight panel, one question at a time keeps focus.
People see that their question was accepted and keep upvoting, which keeps the hall involved to the end.
7 Answered after the session
Twenty good questions and time for six. The rest get marked 'passed to speaker', and the speaker answers them in the follow-up email or on the event page.
How to run it. Say out loud before closing that unanswered questions will be sent on. Then actually send them.
Nobody feels ignored, and the organiser has content for the post-event newsletter.
Pick the speaker
Every question is addressed to a named speaker from your list, so a four-person panel doesn't turn into a free-for-all.
Upvotes from the hall
Other attendees support a question with one thumbs-up per phone. The popular ones rise to the top of the list.
Pre-moderation on or off
Switch on approval for sensitive sessions, off for a friendly workshop where speed matters more.
Name or anonymous
The organiser chooses: always anonymous, name required, or the attendee decides.
What happens on the attendee's phone
The attendee sees the list of speakers, taps one, writes the question and presses send. An animated confirmation shows it was received. If the organiser allows it, there is a field for a name, or a switch to stay anonymous. Below the form sits the list of questions that other people have asked, each with a thumbs-up button. One phone gets one upvote per question, and the server blocks repeats.
What the moderator sees and does
New questions arrive in the control panel with their text, the addressed speaker and the author's name when it isn't anonymous. The moderator can approve, reject, hide something already published, put a question on the big screen, or mark it as passed to the speaker. The list sorts by newest, most popular, by speaker or by status.
Pre-moderation is a switch. With it on, nothing appears for the audience until the moderator approves it. With it off, questions go straight into the public list and the moderator only hides what shouldn't be there.
Who should moderate
Not the panel moderator on stage. That person is busy listening, following up and managing time. Give the laptop to a second person in the tech booth or at the side of the stage, who filters, approves and passes the best three to the stage moderator's tablet. On a small workshop one person can do both; on a plenary it rarely works.
'Can I just put everything through?' 'You can, until someone asks the CEO about the parking.'
The mistakes that make Q&A fall flat
Forgetting to switch on pre-moderation for a sensitive internal session. Opening questions only when the talk ends, so people have to think and type in the same two minutes. Not telling the room how questions will be chosen. Putting the QR code on the first slide only. And never checking that the stage screen actually shows the question in a readable size from the back row.
Connection and devices
The Q&A runs through the server in real time, so attendees need a working mobile connection or venue Wi-Fi, and the control laptop should ideally be on a cable. The phone view works in the standard browser on iOS and Android. If the signal drops for a moment, the attendee returns to the same session and nothing they sent is lost.
Getting a feel for it first
You can set up a panel, add speakers and send test questions from your own phone during the free 72-hour demo, no card needed. Afterwards the platform is available on a monthly plan or as one payment with lifetime access to all its sections; prices are at pultevent.ru/en.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who hosts forums, industry conferences and corporate events, and has run over 500 events since 2014: best host of Moscow 2024 and of Saint Petersburg 2023 at the TOP 100 Awards. He built it for his own stages first. The rest is at pultevent.ru/en.
How to run a moderated Q&A at a conference
- 1
Add the speakers for each session to the Q&A in the Forum interactive section.
- 2
Choose the anonymity model and decide whether pre-moderation is on.
- 3
Put the QR code on screen at the start of the session and say that questions are open.
- 4
Have a second person approve questions and sort them by popularity or by speaker.
- 5
Put the chosen question on the big screen and let the stage moderator read it out.
- 6
Mark the unanswered ones as passed to the speaker and send the answers on after the event.
FAQ
Do attendees need to download anything?
Can people ask anonymously?
Can someone upvote their own question ten times?
Can I hide a question that was already published?
Can questions be addressed to a specific panellist?
Can we put our own logo on the Q&A screen?
See also
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