Managing streaming delays with live polls and Q&A

At a virtual or hybrid event, all or part of your audience will be attending your live sessions remotely.

This is possible thanks to live streaming. When you broadcast your live session to your remote audience as a live stream, there will always be a delay between the moment when your speakers are presenting on stage and the moment when your audience sees/hears what is happening via the stream.

In this article we'll explain how this delay works, how you can manage the delay when running polls, provide a visual timeline of the in person and remote attendee experience, and explain how the submitted responses to polls are handled in view of this delay (i.e. the "grace period").

We'll also provide some guidance on how to handle this delay when managing live session Q&A.

Why is there a streaming delay and how does it work?

To be able to understand the delay (also known as latency) in streaming, it is important to understand how streaming works.

Streaming is when there are a number of presenters that speak to a large audience that are spread out in multiple locations, in a one-way collaboration. When streaming a presentation to multiple locations, the video is being compressed, transferred, and received at all these locations using the available bandwidth.

The accumulation of these actions results in a delay (or latency). This means that the presentation in real time will be streamed with a slight delay; at SpotMe an average of 30 seconds is expected on our platforms. For virtual or hybrid sessions, all live interactivity options are delivered to the remote audience via the live stream, meaning that the same delay is applied to the live interactivity options such as polls or Q&A questions.

Although there is up to 30 seconds of delay between what the host and speakers do in the studio, and what the remote audience see via the live stream, please be aware that the presentation (i.e. what the remote audience see and hear on stage) and the interactivity options (live polls and Q&A that appear via the live stream) will have the exact same delay, and will therefore be in sync. This means that despite the delay the experience for your attendees is fully seamless.

More information on how the live stream and live interactivity is delivered to participants.

How to manage the streaming delay when running live polls

As a reminder, there are three main steps when running a multiple choice poll:

• Launching the poll: this is when the poll becomes accessible to attendees via the live stream, and is also the time during which responses are received from the audience.
• Closing the poll: this is when the poll can no longer be responded to by attendees via the live stream.
• Showing results (optional): this is when the results become accessible to attendees via the live stream.

For each of these steps, the attendees will see notifications on the live stream:

All of the above described actions will be experienced by the audience with a delay of up to 30 seconds, but will be fully in sync with the on-screen presentation (which has the same delay), therefore creating a completely seamless experience for your remote attendees.

Tip: After launching a poll, always continue with your presentation for at least one minute before you close the poll. This minimum duration will ensure that your audience has plenty of time to respond before the poll disappears, taking into consideration the delay. and that all responses will have been received before you decide to close the poll.

Note: It is worth noting that, in order to keep the remote attendee (web app) experience in-sync with the Studio live session (including the 30 second steaming delay), when attendees pause the live stream via the app, no poll notifications will be visible, and also no launched poll questions will visible.

Example of a live session poll for remote and in person attendees

Below is a basic timeline of how things can occur when running a poll in a virtual or hybrid live session, for attendees that are remote or in-person.

How are poll votes received during the "grace period" handled?

As described above, when streaming to a remote audience there is a delay between the host/moderator closing a poll and the audience seeing that the poll is closed. We refer to that period of time as the "grace period". During this period, remote attendees are not aware that the poll has been closed and can still submit their votes.

The below table summarizes how the votes received during the grace period are handled. This is applicable to multiple choice polls and word cloud polls:

How to manage the streaming delay with live Q&A

Q&A questions can be submitted throughout the session in real time by the audience, and pushed to the screen whenever needed by the host or moderator in order to be discussed.

Again, there will be up to 30-seconds of delay between the moment when the host or moderator clicks on Push to screen for a Q&A question, and when the question actually appears to the remote audience.

The Q&A questions that are pushed to screen will appear in sync with the video to your remote attendees, creating a completely seamless experience.

The speaker or the host on stage, on the other hand, will see the question appear on screen in the preview in the studio immediately.

Tip: We recommend that you always open the Q&A right from the beginning of the live session. This ensures that you will start to receive Q&A questions as soon as possible and will avoid you having to wait for Q&A questions to come in during the presentation.