Patent ID: 8130273

Claim:
A system for identifying audience members and sequencing audience participation, the system comprising: a computing device with logic and storage devices electrically connected to one or more audience member control panels, one or more audience identification devices, and a moderator or speaker user interface; wherein the one or more audience control panels are configured for individual audience members to make requests; wherein the computing device: receives the audience member requests and places the audience member requests in a sequential list in the order that the audience member requests were received; records position identifiers for the audience members in the sequential list; sends the sequential list to the moderator or speaker; retrieves audience member seat coordinates in response to the recorded position identifiers; calculates actuation commands to control the one or more audience identification devices; actuates the one or more audience identification devices to highlight or focus on an audience member in response to recognition of the audience member by the moderator or speaker; activates a microphone located in the vicinity of the recognized audience member, while disabling additional audience member microphones; wherein the sequential list and audience member seat coordinates are stored in a database contained in the storage devices; wherein the calculation of actuation commands is carried out with trigonometric algorithms and functions utilizing the audience member seat coordinates in relation to the one or more audience identification devices; and wherein the moderator or speaker recognizes audience members from the sequential list displayed on a laptop, workstation, or some other user interface device.