PULTEVENT
Corporate summit interactive platform: 7 moments for leadership meetings
A corporate summit interactive platform earns its place when the people in the room are senior, busy and slightly guarded. At an annual leadership summit or a two-day management offsite, the agenda is usually strategy, the audience is the top two or three layers of the company, and the risk is polite silence. Here is how phone-based interaction changes that, and seven moments in the program where it pays off.
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Leadership events have their own dynamics. Regional directors sit next to the people they report to. A new strategy lands, and nobody wants to be the one who says it looks unrealistic. Questions to the CEO come from the same confident few. And the second day of an offsite often ends with a wall of sticky notes that nobody photographs properly.
PULTEVENT gives every participant a quiet channel from their own phone. They scan a QR code, open a page in the browser with the company's branding, and respond: reactions, questions, a side in a debate, a budget to allocate. The facilitator steers from a laptop, and the main screen shows the room's view as it forms. The service works through a server, so the venue needs reliable Wi-Fi or decent mobile coverage.
7 summit and offsite moments, and what to run in each
1 Opening keynote from the CEO
While the CEO presents the year and the direction, participants tap reactions on their phones. Swap the defaults for a set that fits: clear direction, ambitious, need detail, fully behind this. The mix grows on a side screen, without numbers.
How to run it. Show the reaction screen to the CEO on a confidence monitor too. Most leaders want the signal and rarely get it in real time.
The executive team sees which messages landed and which ones need a follow-up in the breakouts, before the day is over.
2 Ask me anything with the leadership team
Participants choose the executive they want to ask, write a question and send it. With anonymous mode on, nobody's name appears. Colleagues upvote questions they also want answered, and the moderator sends the top ones to the screen.
How to run it. Agree with the CEO beforehand that the most upvoted question will be answered first, whatever it is. Then keep that promise on stage.
Anonymity changes the questions. You get the uncomfortable ones, and answering them in the room builds more trust than a polished town-hall deck.
3 Build or buy, expand or consolidate
Put a real strategic choice on screen as two positions, each argued by a named executive with their photo. Participants pick a side, the split updates live, and a chart records the swing while the two argue.
How to run it. Allow people to change their vote. The trend line is more useful than the final number, because it shows which argument moved the room.
Disagreement that would otherwise stay in corridors becomes a data point the leadership team can discuss openly.
4 Allocating next year's focus
List six to eight initiatives as cards with a short description and an owner. Each leader gets a budget of points, named whatever suits your culture, and spreads it. Initiatives rank by total points, with the number of backers shown alongside.
How to run it. Decide whether leaders must spend the full budget. Allowing a reserve tells you which initiatives nobody is convinced by.
It replaces the dot-voting exercise on flipcharts with a result that is instant, legible and ready for the minutes.
5 Breakout report-backs
Each breakout group presents its findings in five minutes. Start a new reaction session for each group so every presentation gets its own chart, then compare them at the end of the day.
How to run it. Trigger the new session exactly when the next group walks up. The facilitator can do it from a phone browser with the control panel open.
Groups care about how their work was received. A chart per group is fairer than applause volume.
6 Offsite in a small room
Twenty-five managers in a hotel meeting room, a TV instead of a projector. The same tools work at that scale: a laptop connected to the TV by HDMI, the stage window in full screen, phones in hand.
How to run it. Bring your own HDMI cable and adapter. Check the hotel Wi-Fi from a phone in the actual room, not the lobby.
Small groups are where candour matters most, and where a quiet channel for the introverts in the room makes the biggest difference.
7 Closing commitment check
End the summit with a short debate-format question: do you leave with a clear view of your top three priorities, yes or not yet. Hide the result until you close the round, then show it.
How to run it. Have the CEO respond on stage to whatever the number is. A not-yet majority is a reason for a follow-up, not an embarrassment.
It tells the organizing team whether the event did its job, in a way a feedback form sent a week later never does.
Questions the CEO actually gets
Anonymous questions with moderation surface what managers talk about at the coffee break.
Strategy choices made visible
Two options, one tap each, and a live split with a trend line as the discussion develops.
Budget points, not wish lists
Leaders spread a limited budget across initiatives, so the ranking reflects real trade-offs.
In the company's colors
Logo, colors, wording and button texts are set by your team in the control panel.
Anonymity is a design decision
In Q&A the organizer chooses one of three models: fully anonymous, name required, or name optional. At a leadership summit the choice sets the tone of the whole event. Anonymous gets the hard questions. Named gets fewer, more considered ones. Optional is a reasonable middle ground for companies with an open culture already.
Whatever you pick, switch pre-moderation on. The moderator sees each question first, can approve, reject or hide it later, can mark it as passed to a specific executive, and sorts by newest, most upvoted, by executive or by status.
Keeping executives comfortable
Some leaders worry about a live split on a strategic question being projected in front of their teams. Two settings help. You can hide results from participants until you decide to show them, and you can switch off the display of the number of voters. The executive sponsor can see the result on the control panel first and decide how to use it.
Who runs it on the day
At a large summit, the AV team connects the laptop to the main screen and a producer or the event manager runs the control panel. At an offsite, the facilitator can do both. It takes about fifteen minutes to learn. The typical script is short: "Scan the code on screen. There's nothing to install. Your answers are anonymous. Let's see where the room stands."
Frequent slip-ups
Announcing a result before closing the round, so late votes change it on screen. Letting the first hour pass without showing the QR code, then struggling to get people to join mid-afternoon. Skipping pre-moderation on the executive Q&A. Testing the screen at 8 am but not after the lunch break, when the hotel has swapped the input for the afternoon presenter's laptop.
Data, branding and cost
The page participants open carries your logo, colors and internal naming, and your team can edit all of it in the control panel. Each phone counts once, repeat attempts are blocked, and dropped connections return to the same session. Results can be exported for the leadership team's follow-up and then deleted. The servers are in Russia, worth checking with your compliance team. A 72-hour trial costs nothing and needs no card; after that there is a monthly plan or a one-off payment that gives lifetime access.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who hosts forums, corporate conferences and leadership events. He has run over 500 events since 2014 and was named 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 corporate summit with interactive tools
- 1
Agree with the executive sponsor where in the agenda the room will respond, and choose the anonymity model.
- 2
Enter executives, strategic options and initiative cards in the control panel.
- 3
Apply company branding and rename the reactions and the points currency.
- 4
Test the main screen and a phone in the actual room the evening before.
- 5
Show the QR code in the opening minutes and run each moment from the control panel.
- 6
Export the results for the leadership follow-up, then clear the data.
FAQ
Will participants have to install something on company phones?
Can questions to the CEO stay anonymous?
Can we keep a strategy vote off the screen?
Does it work for a small offsite?
Can someone skew the result?
What happens to the answers after the summit?
What does it cost?
See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
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