SpeakUp

Get up, SpeakUp! 

SpeakUp makes discussions more inclusive! During an event, smartphones can be used to ask questions which participants can see directly and which can be integrated by the moderator. Everyone can have their say in this online room. 

Discussion events are an important part of our democracy, with which millions of people come into contact every year. They allow participants to ask questions and get involved. In practice, however, discussions are often too short and too many people are excluded. With SpeakUp we want to make a decisive contribution to more active and inclusive discussions. We want to make sure that the quiet people are also heard and that they are consciously given the space that is otherwise often taken by dominant and loud people. As an online space SpeakUp is more accessible for a multitude of people who don't get a chance to speak so easily in conventional "offline" discussions.

That is why we have decided that the setting of characteristics must be a central part of the SpeakUp concept. Moderators can define the features that participants choose for themselves, e.g. gender or other features relevant to the discussion. Answered questions can be marked as such by the moderator and are included in the statistics. Thus SpeakUp shows live which features predominate in the discussion and which underrepresented perspectives are. The moderator can then actively include questions from people with underrepresented characteristics in the discussion. 

SpeakUp simplifies speech lists for presenters, creates an awareness of speech dominance and enables more diverse and inclusive discussions. Get in, SpeakUp!