What Is PollQR and How Can Event Organizers Use It?

PollQR is a live polling service created by Steve Murch, the tech entrepreneur behind stevemurch.com. It is designed to make presentations interactive and to give event organizers a simple way to run audience competitions. If you are giving a talk and want the audience to respond in real time, or you are running a tradeshow or hackathon and want attendees to rate booths or projects, PollQR is built for that. The site presents it through two primary use cases: turning a presentation into a conversation, and running "Rate this Booth" style competitions with jury dashboards and a leaderboard.

What PollQR Does

PollQR is a live polling and audience-response tool. The core idea is that instead of presenting to a passive room, you invite the audience to respond through their phones, and their input appears as part of the session.

Two capabilities are described on stevemurch.com:

• Live polling for presentations. The article "5 Ways to Turn Your Presentation into a Conversation" describes five methods for making a presentation more engaging using PollQR as the live polling service behind them.
• Competition management for events. The article "Event Organizers: Run Competitions Easily with PollQR" describes creating "Rate this Booth" type competitions, complete with jury dashboards and a leaderboard, and collecting any information you would like from participants.

Using PollQR in a Presentation

The stated goal is to convert a one-way presentation into a conversation. PollQR supports this by letting the audience respond live rather than waiting for a Q&A at the end.

The site does not publish a step-by-step setup walkthrough in the material available, so the practical sequence is best confirmed on PollQR itself. What the source does establish is the intended workflow:

1. You are giving a presentation and want audience input during it.
2. You use PollQR as the live polling service for that session.
3. Audience responses become part of the talk, making it interactive rather than one-directional.

The "5 Ways" article frames this as a set of techniques rather than a single feature, so the value is in how you weave polling into the flow of the talk, not just in collecting votes.

Using PollQR for Event Competitions

This is the more structured use case, aimed at organizers of tradeshows, hackathons, and similar events.

The combination matters: a jury dashboard lets designated judges score entries, the leaderboard surfaces standings, and participant data collection means you can gather contact details, feedback, or other fields alongside the ratings. For a hackathon, that could mean judges scoring projects while attendees also weigh in; for a tradeshow, it could mean attendees rating booths while organizers capture lead information.

Who It Fits

PollQR is a reasonable fit if you:

• Give presentations and want real-time audience participation instead of a silent room.
• Organize a tradeshow, hackathon, or similar event and want a lightweight way to run a rating competition.
• Need both a jury scoring view and a public leaderboard in one place.
• Want to collect participant information as part of the voting or rating process.

It is less relevant if you only need a static survey with no live component, or if you need a full event-registration and ticketing platform, since the source material describes polling and competition features rather than registration or payment handling.

Practical Considerations

The site does not publish pricing, account requirements, or setup instructions in the available material, so check PollQR directly before committing to it for an event. Two things are worth confirming early:

• How participants join. Live polling typically works through a link or code that attendees open on their phones, so test the join flow on the venue's Wi-Fi and on cellular before the event.
• How jury and leaderboard access is controlled. If judges need separate logins or a distinct dashboard view, verify that before the day of the event.

For a presentation, the main risk is friction: if the audience cannot join quickly, the polling interrupts rather than enhances the talk. For a competition, the main risk is scoring disputes, so decide in advance how jury scores and participant ratings are weighted on the leaderboard.

Bottom Line

PollQR is Steve Murch's live polling service for two jobs: making presentations conversational through real-time audience response, and letting event organizers run "Rate this Booth" style competitions with jury dashboards, a leaderboard, and participant data collection. If either of those matches your event, it is worth testing the join flow and judging setup before you rely on it live.