How do you open a conference so that the audience participates?

By asking for participation in the first minutes, with a gesture that carries very little risk. A question the room answers by raising a hand or standing up establishes that participation is normal in that space, before anyone settles into the role of spectator. The order matters more than the content of the question: if the first thing that happens is a 20-minute speech, the default contract becomes one of consumption, and the interactive sessions in the afternoon will be fighting against it.

What is the difference between a moderator and a conference facilitator?

A moderator manages the programme: introduces the speakers, keeps time, runs the Q&A. A conference facilitator designs the participants' experience: what happens between presentations, how what was heard turns into something usable, how the sessions connect to each other. The first job makes the day flow. The second makes the day leave something behind. Many conferences need both, and in practice they are often the same person, with two different sets of decisions to make.

Why is a Menti poll not enough for interactivity?

Because a poll asks for a button press, not a change of state. Participants stay individually in their seats, nobody talks to anybody, and the result appears on screen as a statistic that the speaker then comments on alone. Real interaction means people exchange something with each other, even if it is only 60 seconds with the person in the next seat, and then part of what came up reaches the stage. The difference shows during the break: after a poll, people check their phones; after a one-minute conversation, they keep talking.

20 October 2026 · Bogdan Grigore

The first ten minutes of a conference decide the rest of the day

This year I opened the ICF Romania conference. Not with a speech, but with a question the whole room answered by raising a hand. It is the one moment of the day when you can change the default contract between the stage and the room, which makes it more than a warm-up trick.

That contract gets written anyway, in the first minutes, whether anyone designs it or not. At an ordinary conference it reads: you sit and listen, we talk. Once written, it is not renegotiated at 3 pm, however good the interactive session on the agenda may be.

A conference room with a few hundred participants, many with a raised hand, seen from the edge of the stage, with the moderator in the foreground. — In the first ten minutes the room decides whether it participates or consumes.

Why the opening, and not the afternoon

In a room of a few hundred people, every participant makes a decision in the first minutes, usually without putting it into words: today I am here to consume, or today I am here to take part. The decision is based on what they see happening, not on what the programme says.

If the first thing that happens is someone talking from the stage for 20 minutes, the decision goes to consumption, and the interactive session at 3:30 pm has to fight a habit that has been in place for seven hours. It usually loses, and the organisers conclude that their audience is not the kind that participates.

The room doesn't decide whether to participate when you ask it to. It decides in the first ten minutes, by watching what happens.

Five things, in the first ten minutes

1. A very low-risk gesture, asked of everyone

A question answered by raising a hand. Nobody has to speak, nobody can get it wrong, nobody is singled out. The social cost is close to zero and the effect is large: the room learns, from its own body, that people here do something, they don't just listen.

The rule I follow: the first request exposes nobody. If you start by asking someone to say something into a microphone, you have established that participation is risky, which is exactly the opposite of what you wanted.

2. The room sees itself

Two or three questions that make the composition visible: who is here for the first time, who came with a colleague, who has a concrete problem in mind and hopes for an answer today. People don't look at me when they answer, they look around.

This is the moment when 300 strangers become a group that knows something about itself. Without it, you are left with 300 people who happen to be sitting in the same space.

3. Sixty seconds with your neighbour

A short question, discussed with the person next to you, timed. It is the one move on the list that organisers fear will break the rhythm, and the one that guarantees people will have someone to talk to during the break.

This is also where the difference from a phone poll shows. A poll asks for a button press and leaves people exactly where they were. A one-minute conversation changes the state of the room, and you can hear the change in the noise level when you ask for quiet again.

4. The contract, said out loud

What happens today, what is expected of them, what is not expected. Including the permissions: that it is fine to step out if you have an important call, that questions are welcome at any time, that nobody has to speak. Explicit permissions reduce anxiety more than any generous invitation to participate.

5. One question to carry through the day

A single question that I leave them with for the whole day and come back to at the end. It gives the day a thread, and at the close I have something to work with, instead of thanking everyone and hoping it went well.

What I don't do in the first ten minutes

I don't read out the agenda. It is in the programme and on the screen. Reading it uses up exactly the minutes in which the contract is being set, and tells the room that the day is a checklist.
I don't run an energiser unrelated to the topic. The room accepts it politely and registers that the moderator is filling time.
I don't talk about myself for more than 30 seconds. Credibility in this role comes from how you run the room, not from what you did before.

The part everything depends on, and nobody sees

None of the above works unless there was a conversation beforehand with the organisers about what they want to change in the people who leave. Not about topics, not about speakers. About what should be different on Monday.

When the answer is "to learn what's new in the field", a classic conference is the right format and needs nothing of what I do. When the answer is "to get to know each other", "to leave with something to apply" or "to feel part of a community", then the opening, the transitions and the closing are where the day is won or lost.

The rest of what facilitation brings to a conference, from transitions to the close, is on the conference moderation page, and the longer argument, with the nine moments, is in the article on facilitation at conferences.

Planning a conference?

The first conversation is about what you want to be different in the people who leave, not about the agenda. The format comes out of that answer, including when the conclusion is that you don't need a facilitator.

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