Raise Hands allows participants to communicate with the meeting organizer or moderator without commandeering the proceedings. With the simple tap of a button, your virtual hand is raised, and a notification appears to indicate you have a question or comment to be addressed. The speaker can then respond at their discretion — perhaps in real time but most likely at a more opportune moment that’s not in the middle of making an important point. After all, isn’t that when the disruptions always tend to occur?

In addition to enabling participants to speak up without speaking out, Raise Hands provides moderators with the tools to manage meetings better. Participants with raised hands can be easily identified by the hand icons next to their names in the participants list or filtered out from all participants with a single click. Moderators can also lower hands individually or lower all hands simultaneously if questions have been addressed or are no longer being accepted.

Speaking of moderators, with another recent update, any admin or superuser for your Lifesize account can now moderate any meeting they join. With this increased control, assigning moderator privileges to your most trusted personnel is no longer required on a meeting-by-meeting basis.