Managing the Q&A Flow Live

This article provides best practices and practical guidance for managing the Q&A flow in real time during a live AGM session — including handling spikes in submissions, coordinating with the speaker, and closing out the Q&A session.

Staying Synchronized with the Meeting

Your most important tool is the meeting audio. Listen to the speaker so you know what topic is being discussed — this helps you prioritize questions that are relevant to the current agenda item.

• Make sure your audio is unmuted in the Screening Room so you can hear the main session.
• When the meeting moves to a new agenda item, shift your attention to questions on that topic.
• Communicate with co-Selectors and the organizer via the Screening Room chat if you need to coordinate.

Handling High Volume

Large AGMs can receive hundreds of questions during a Q&A segment. Strategies for managing volume:

• Work in parallel — If you have multiple Selectors, coordinate so each is watching a different part of the list or focused on different themes.
• Prioritize upvoted questions — If participant upvoting is enabled, questions with many upvotes represent the broadest shared interest.
• Scan for themes — Skim quickly to identify clusters of similar questions; pick the best-phrased one from each cluster to queue.
• Don't queue everything — The Selector's value is curation. A curated list of 5 great questions is better than 20 in the queue.

Controlling the Pace for the Speaker

As a Selector, you control the pace of Q&A for the speaker. Best practices:

• Keep 2–3 questions in the speaker queue at all times so the speaker always has something to move to next.
• Do not flood the queue — too many questions can be overwhelming and disorienting.
• If the speaker is taking longer than expected on a question, hold off adding more to the queue.
• Listen for the organizer's verbal cues about time remaining in the Q&A session and slow down queue additions accordingly.

Communicating with the Speaker

You can send a direct message to the speaker from the Screening Room by using the Direct Conversations feature. Use this to:

• Alert them that a particularly sensitive question is coming up.
• Let them know how many questions are remaining in the queue.
• Warn them if a topic is generating lots of questions so they can be prepared.

Closing the Q&A Session

The organizer decides when to close Q&A submissions. They will either:

• Close Q&A from the organizer console (no new submissions will be accepted), or
• Signal via the Screening Room chat that no more questions should be queued.

When closing out:

1. Stop adding new questions to the speaker queue.
2. Allow the speaker to finish with the questions currently in queue.
3. Any remaining approved but unqueued questions are captured in the post-meeting Q&A transcript for the organizer's reference.