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Festery for conferences

Conference engagement beyond the main stage.

Recap quizzes that make sessions stick, networking that starts itself, an attendee photo wall, and a booth mechanic sponsors will actually ask for. All from a QR code, none of it requiring your app.

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Conference attendees engaged during a session
Attention is the scarce resource at a conference. Participation is how you keep it.
The conference problem

The programme is excellent.
The room is on email.

Every conference organiser knows the shape of the day. The morning keynote lands well. The first breakout is engaged. By the second session after lunch, a visible proportion of the room is answering email under the table, and by the closing panel the back third has quietly become a departure lounge. Nothing about the programme has got worse — the speakers in the afternoon are frequently better than the ones in the morning. What has degraded is the audience's capacity to receive it.

The second known problem is networking, which every attendee lists as their primary reason for coming and which most conferences leave almost entirely to chance. The mechanism on offer is a room, a drink and the hope that adults will introduce themselves to strangers. Some do. Most talk to the colleague they travelled with, take a lanyard photo, and leave at nine.

The third is that your sponsors have paid for a booth on a floor that people walk past at speed, and their success metric is conversations they did not have to chase. All three problems have the same underlying shape: attention without a reason to act. A recall quiz, a guessing game about the room, and a leaderboard at a booth are three narrow interventions on exactly that.

01

Attention decays after lunch

The afternoon sessions aren't worse. The audience's ability to passively receive them is. Recall beats listening for retention.

02

Networking is left to chance

Attendees name it as the main reason they came, and are then handed a room and a drink. The opening line is the actual obstacle.

03

Sponsors need a reason to stop

A booth competes with a corridor. Exhibitors are buying conversations, and a passive stand doesn't generate them.

How Festery fits a conference

Four mechanics.
Three problems.

Most conferences start with the quiz for sessions and sponsors, then add the networking piece to the welcome reception.

12Quiz

12quiz.app

For sessions, sponsors and the afternoon slump

The workhorse of a conference. Two minutes at the end of a session turns an audience that listened into an audience that retrieved, which is what actually produces retention. On the expo floor, the same mechanic gives a sponsor a reason for people to stop.

  • End-of-session recaps: "let's see what stuck"
  • Sponsor booth quizzes with a leaderboard running all day
  • Resets attention in the graveyard slot better than coffee alone
  • Prize draws and closing-ceremony rounds with the whole hall playing
How 12Quiz works →Open 12quiz.app ↗

WhoGame

whogame.app

For the welcome reception and networking hours

Networking fails at the opening line, not at the willingness. A guessing game about the people in the room supplies the topic so attendees don't have to invent one while holding a canapé.

  • Turns the welcome reception from a standing room into a conversation
  • Works for first-time attendees who know nobody — the hardest case
  • No facilitator, no name-badge bingo, no forced rotation
  • Gives booth staff and hosts a natural opener too
How WhoGame works →Open whogame.app ↗

MemWall

memwall.app

For coverage your photographer can't get

One photographer covers one room at a time. Several hundred attendees cover every room, every side conversation and every corridor moment simultaneously, and the results look like the event rather than like a brochure.

  • A live wall on the foyer screens between sessions
  • Attendee-made content for the post-event report and next year's marketing
  • Sponsors and speakers get visible presence without a separate ask
  • Download everything for the wrap-up and the following edition
How MemWall works →Open memwall.app ↗

JukeFloor

jukefloor.com

For the gala dinner and the evening programme

The social programme is where a conference is judged in the bar afterwards. Letting delegates influence the music is a low-effort way to make the evening feel like theirs rather than like a scheduled item.

  • Requests and voting during the gala dinner and after-party
  • Handles an international delegate mix better than one playlist
  • Works alongside a hired DJ rather than replacing them
  • Keeps the evening moving without an MC driving it
How JukeFloor works →Open jukefloor.com ↗
Run of show

A two-day conference, mapped.

The pattern generalises: participation at the edges of sessions, not in the middle of them.

Registration desk

QR on the badge, not just the sign

Whatever you want attendees to use has to be on something they are already carrying. The back of the badge is the most reliable surface at any conference.

MemWall · WhoGame
Welcome reception, evening one

Fix the opening-line problem

The highest-leverage hour of the whole conference and the one most often left to chance. A guessing game about the room gives first-time attendees a way in that doesn't require nerve.

WhoGame · MemWall
End of each session

Two minutes of recall

"Let's see what stuck." Short, low-stakes, and genuinely effective — retrieval practice is how adults retain conference content. It also tells the speaker what didn't land.

12Quiz
Expo floor, all day

Give sponsors something that stops people

A booth quiz with a running leaderboard gives exhibitors an opening line and gives attendees a reason to return and check their position. Sponsors notice the difference in conversation count.

12Quiz · MemWall
Gala dinner

Hand the evening to the delegates

Music voting through dinner and after. A hall of international delegates has no single playlist, and letting them vote is faster than guessing.

JukeFloor · MemWall
Closing session

Play the whole hall in at once

A final round with everyone playing, the leaderboard on the main screen and the prize draw at the end. It holds the closing session together, which is otherwise the hardest slot to fill.

12Quiz
Why organisers choose it

The honest selling points.

Retrieval beats listening, and it isn't close

The reason a two-minute recap quiz is worth its slot is not that it's fun. It's that being asked to retrieve something you heard twenty minutes ago moves it from recognition into memory in a way that continuing to listen does not. Framed as a recall exercise rather than a game, it belongs in a serious technical programme.

Sponsors are buying conversations

Exhibitors do not evaluate a conference on footfall; they evaluate it on how many conversations they had that weren't chased down the aisle. Giving them a mechanic that makes attendees stop voluntarily is something you can put in a sponsorship prospectus, and it's easier to sell than another logo placement.

It doesn't require attendees to install your app

Conference app adoption is a well-known disappointment, and every participation mechanic behind an install gates itself to the minority who bothered. A QR code on a badge has no adoption curve. If you do have an app, link it from there and get both.

You get coverage a photographer physically cannot

Five hundred attendees photograph five hundred vantage points at once. For a post-event report, a sponsor summary and next year's marketing, that library is worth more than the staged shots — and it costs nothing beyond asking for it.

It travels across a series

If you run the same conference in six cities, the mechanics move with you and only the content changes. That is exactly the case the business and agency packages are built for.

Conference engagement ideasAudience interaction toolsLive audience participationConference networking icebreakersSession recap quizTrade show booth engagement ideasSponsor activation ideasEvent gamificationAttendee photo wallDelegate engagementExhibition stand ideasGala dinner entertainment
Planning notes

What separates the ones that work.

  • Put the QR on the badge. Signage gets walked past; lanyards get looked at every time someone checks a name. It is the single highest-conversion surface at any conference.
  • Brief your speakers, don't surprise them. A recap quiz belongs to the session, so the speaker should know it's coming and ideally supply the questions. Sprung on them, it reads as an interruption.
  • Match the register to the room. "Let's see what stuck" and "and now, a game show" are the same twelve questions with completely different reception. Choose the framing deliberately for a medical congress versus a marketing summit.
  • Sell it into the sponsorship prospectus early. If booth engagement is part of the package, sponsors need to know before they design their stand, not the week of the event.
  • Say the photo terms out loud. Announce where attendee photos may be used, and repeat it in the delegate information. Clarity up front avoids the awkward version of this conversation later.
Conference questions

What organisers ask us.

Where in a conference does this fit best?

Three places, in order of value. The welcome reception, where networking either starts or doesn't. The end of sessions, where a two-minute recap quiz turns passive listening into recall. And the expo floor, where a sponsor needs a reason for people to stop walking. The gala dinner and after-party are a fourth, and easier.

Does this replace our conference app?

No, and it isn't trying to. A conference app is a schedule, a map and a speaker list — infrastructure attendees consult. These are participation moments attendees join. If you already have an app, the sensible move is to link the experience from it; if you don't, this doesn't oblige you to build one.

Won't a quiz feel out of place at a serious professional conference?

Framing decides it entirely. "Let's see what stuck" at the end of a technical session is a recall exercise, and recall exercises are how adults actually retain content — it reads as pedagogy, not entertainment. The same twelve questions announced as a game show would land differently. Match the register to the room and it works at a medical congress as readily as at a marketing summit.

Can sponsors use this at their booth?

It is one of the more effective booth mechanics available, because it answers the exhibitor's actual problem: giving a passer-by a reason to stop for ninety seconds without a hard pitch. A short quiz with a leaderboard running through the day gives booth staff a natural opening line and gives attendees a reason to come back and check their position.

How do we make networking work without forcing it?

The failure of most conference networking is that it asks strangers to generate a topic from nothing while holding a drink. A guessing game about the people in the room supplies the topic. It doesn't manufacture relationships — it removes the opening-line problem, which is the part people find genuinely hard.

Can attendees contribute photos we're allowed to use?

An attendee photo wall gives you far more coverage than one photographer can produce, from angles inside sessions and side conversations nobody was standing near. State the terms of use plainly when you announce it and in the delegate information, so that anyone contributing knows where the images may appear.

We run the same conference in several cities. Does it travel?

That's the straightforward case — the same format, the same QR mechanics, different content per edition. Multi-event and branded use sit in the business and agency packages, which is the right conversation to have if you're running a series rather than one event.

Keep exploring

Other kinds of events

Company eventsSummer parties, kick-offs, offsites and Christmas parties.Venues & hospitalityBars, restaurants, hotels, clubs and resorts.WeddingsPhoto walls, couple quizzes and guest song requests.Birthdays & celebrationsMilestone parties, anniversaries and family gatherings.
For conference organisers

Programming a conference?

Tell us the format, the audience and where the flat spots are. We'll tell you which mechanics fit the register of your room.

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