Patent ID: 8060390

Claim:
A computer based method for assisting communications between a speaker conducting an interview of an interviewee and an audience of the interview by generating representative questions from the audience, the method comprising the steps of: conducting an interview during a time period corresponding to real time; receiving during the time period at a central processing server incoming questions during the time period from a plurality of audience members, thereby obtaining a plurality of audience generated questions; and distilling at a rate substantially corresponding to the rate the questions are received the plurality of audience generated questions to a substantially smaller number of representative questions while also providing at the same rate information indicative of the questions most asked by the audience, the distilling comprising: generating an analysis of the incoming questions at the central processing server, the analysis being updated substantially continuously at the rate that the questions are received, the analysis comprising grouping the incoming questions into groups of related questions, indicating the number of questions in each group of incoming questions, and generating a representative question for each group of incoming questions to yield the substantially smaller number of representative questions and the information indicative of the questions most asked by the audience which together indicate the full range of interests of the audience and the focus of greatest interest in groups of incoming questions, and generating results of the analysis and substantially continually updating the results during a substantial portion of the time period and providing the representative questions including the results and updates and the information indicative of the questions most asked by the audience on an ongoing and substantially real time basis to the speaker for presentation to the interviewee to enable interactive communication between the interviewee and substantially a whole of the audience by providing to the interviewee information about the full range of interests of the audience and the focus of greatest interest in groups of incoming questions.