We found that the polls are a nice way to get immediate audience feedback on a question or issue. PlaceWare also allows an audience member to change the color of his or her seat in the auditorium seating chart to reflect mood or satisfaction level with the presentation. For example, we changed the color of our seat to red to indicate that we were confused and didn't understand the material currently being presented. The criterion for this capability can be changed to reflect the content of the presentation, meaning that the color red could have indicated anger or satisfaction, rather than confusion. It's an interesting way of gauging the audience's interest level.
Administrators can place users in particular groups and can also control access via passwords.
The administrator can either allow attendees to chat in their rows while the presentation is happening or have attendees' undivided attention by turning off this feature. Presenters can annotate slides in real time, with annotations by multiple presenters appearing in different colors. We found this to be a great way to let the audience see who is making changes to the slide. Presenters can add text comments to the presentation as they progress through each slide. Presentations can be set for an automatic slide show, or the presenter can choose exactly when to move to the next slide.