Here’s a cool idea a co-worker of mine found: Poll Everywhere. Basically, their service allows you to create surveys that people can participate in via text, then have those results posted somewhere in real-time. Pretty cool.

OneReach allows our customers to do this kind of thing too, and it’s just the kind of innovative-thinking that needs to happen with businesses and texting.

For example, liven up that classroom! Any professor knows that – despite the rules – students are texting away on their phones, so why not turn the lecture into something interactive? In those stadium-like classrooms, a professor could swap out “raising your hand” with “text your questions and see them popup on the projector.”

That goes for any kind of speaker, actually. Need to prove a theory and make a statement – do a real-time survey during your lecture, and let the conclusions speak for themselves. Make a speech personalized by getting a pie-chart of demographics, interests, etc. A creative speaker could muster audience participation in any number of different ways.

How about a digital guest-book? A OneReach account and a computer monitor in the lobby could be used to let customers “sign-in” via text, then display a personalized welcome message: “You’re the 561st customer to visit Pantsuits International, Jason!”

This sort of interaction can not only liven up an otherwise dull speech or space, it also gathers contact information, useful as leads or creating a following. If the systems you use have exposed APIs, a simple survey can plug the information you need right into it.

I don’t know about you, but I slept through enough lectures to really hope this sort of thing takes off. Here’s hopin’…