Rick Baker, founder of Meridia Interactive, and Jeff Burns, president, can figure out if an audience answers a trivia question correctly or likes an attorney's closing argument. When it comes to adding zest to that dreaded corporate meeting, there are slide shows, video clips and Web-based presentations to consider.
People stand on chairs, scream and hug each other.
These are meetings where people used to be stoic and reserved. Based in Plymouth Meeting, Meridia provides the technology and technicians for running a whole suite of corporate games, as well as other audience participation activities designed to keep employees awake and interested at staff meetings. Games offered by Meridia are usually designed to test employee knowledge of companies' products and policies, or to promote team-building skills. Questions are programmed into the system in advance, and responses can be instantly plotted in colorful graphs on a screen. Meridia provides audience response systems to almost 1,000 customers per year, including several Fortune 500 companies.