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Nowadays, town hall meetings are very common to discuss any concerns or host celebrations. The main goal of these meetings is to gather everyone together and have some sort of announcement. Many town hall meetings have a Q&A session, however, in many cases, people don’t participate. Text messaging is an event technology service which can help encourage attendees to participate by asking questions and offering feedback.

One of the major advantages to text messaging is it allows someone to ask a question or provide feedback anonymously. Some people are not comfortable providing feedback in a public setting in front of a group of people. If you give people an opportunity to provide their feedback or ask questions anonymously, you will increase participation.

In some town hall meetings there isn’t a Q&A session available to attendees due to time constraints or the number of people in attendance. By using text messaging, you will give everyone a chance to ask their question or submit their feedback, without the need to wait their turn in a long lineup. Also, you may collect questions and feedback at one meeting, and then address them at the next meeting. This will help save time, as perhaps one topic that is scheduled does not need to be discussed as there aren’t any questions on it.

If town hall meetings are held in a big corporate event, or political, environment, then almost no questions are answered directly anyway. So, there is little incentive for people to stand up and try to be heard in a big group of people, if it’s likely their question won’t be answered anyway. Text messaging allows not only the people in attendance to ask a question, but also it allows the meeting moderators to screen the questions, in case someone is submitting something that is inappropriate. By collecting questions via text message, the event coordinators, moderators, or anyone else can send answers back should they choose as well.

Text messaging has many benefits to help ensure a productive town hall meeting, especially since it allows anyone to have their say. For your next town hall meeting, why not give it a try?