BACKGROUND

LifeScience Alley is a Minnesota-based trade association that serves nearly 600 member organizations. With a goal to improve the business of life science companies in the area, the association coordinates over 100 education programs a year in order to provide networking and learning opportunities to its varied members.

Many medical device companies are association members, but all life science supporting companies from pharmaceutical to renewable energies, are all invited to join. LifeScience Alley’s member lists includes such reputable names as Medtronic, Beckman Coulter, Mayo Clinic, Boston Scientific, Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Cargill and the University of Minnesota among other start-ups and firms that specialize in the life science field.

THE CHALLENGE

Sharon Hollister is the Education Coordinator at LifeScience Alley, responsible for organizing the logistics before, during and after each program. Both internal staff and industry volunteers work together to generate program ideas, create agendas, identify presentation topics and invite speakers to lead sessions in order to create comprehensive meetings, beneficial to all members.

The latest program Sharon was charged with coordinating was entitled “Healthcare & The News,” and welcomed a unique audience of healthcare professionals and media that regularly report on the medical community. A growing concern over story content that often affects the business of healthcare entities brought the two groups together to begin a discussion on how to create a balance between the scientific and the journalistic.

THE SOLUTION

In order to initiate the conversation on a sensitive topic, Sharon needed a way to collect feedback without turning the meeting into a heated debate. Her supervisor had recently attended an event where audience response was used, and recommended incorporating a system into the “Healthcare & The News” program. On loan from a Florida university with whom the association had a relationship, Sharon used TurningPoint audience response in conjunction with ResponseCard keypads for participant responding.

“In thinking about that topic, we really wanted to help guide people’s thinking and help people interact. We wanted a way to get anonymous viewpoints on the current topic, and find out where the discussion needed to go for an audience with differing opinions,” said Sharon.

The TurningPoint system was used at the beginning of the program to gain preliminary perspectives, to lead into panel discussions presented by both sides, and to wrap-up the session before speakers opened the floor for final questions. The few questions asked in-between each section of the program provided for transition and facilitated an orderly dialogue instead of an aimless argument.

THE CONCLUSION

The audience reacted positively to the use of TurningPoint, and enjoyed instantly seeing the results on screen. Sharon wanted to display participant responses immediately so that the audience could form questions for the upcoming Q&A portion of the meeting. The real-time feedback provided a huge advantage for that particular discussion.

“One of the biggest challenges we overcame was encouraging audience interaction within a diverse group. The key part was the anonymity that the system provided versus trying to do a show of hands or another voting method,” said Sharon. “We could have used paper surveys and compiled the information, but that would have been time-consuming. The real-time was important.”

Sharon had never used TurningPoint before her experience at the “Healthcare & The News” program. One of her colleagues quickly demonstrated how to create a question slide, but Sharon found the system easy-to-use for someone who had no previous experience.

“If you’re familiar with PowerPoint, it’s really easy to take that knowledge and make a slide right away using the TurningPoint features. It was user-friendly and easy to set-up,” Sharon said. “We were very pleased with the results and the interaction it sparked.”

For more information about purchasing Turning Technologies’ audience response systems for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.