Patent ID: 7937285

Claim:
A method of facilitating remote participation in an activity monitorable by an audience comprising a plurality of members, the method comprising the steps of: a. facilitating remote monitoring of the activity by the audience; b. receiving at least one client implemented on a computer system comprising a computer processor, within a response period, first input commands from multiple audience members concerning progress of the action, wherein each first input command is in the form of a votel, wherein a votel is an indicator, associated with an individual audience member, that is placed by an audience member onto a visual representation of the activity environment by the individual audience member to indicate the individual audience member's choice of input command, each votel being defined as a vector or function of the individual audience member, the time of placement of the votel onto the visual representation of the activity environment, and the coordinates of the physical location of the placed votel within the visual representation of the activity environment; c. presenting, in a continuous, dynamic fashion, the first input commands received from all audience members to the audience; d. accepting, at the at least one computer system-implemented client from individual audience members within the response period, revised input commands in the form of the position of a votel placed by an audience member onto a visual representation of the activity environment; e. presenting, in a continuous, dynamic fashion, any revised input command received from any individual audience member in place of the first input command received from that audience member along with all other input commands received during the response period; f. processing the received input commands from all audience members using an aggregator implemented on a computer system to develop a consensus command derived from the coordinates of the votels, wherein the votels are classified into clusters based on their associated coordinates and the clusters are analyzed to determine the consensus command; and g. directing at least one future action according to the consensus command.