evaluations

Connect the dots not collect the dots

Monday, August 21st, 2023 by Adrian Segar

Connect the dots, not collect the dots. How can we maximize the real value of a meeting? By maximizing how participants “connect the dots”—what they actually learn from their experiences at the meeting—rather than documenting what we or they think they should have learned.

Seth Godin makes the same point when talking about the future of education and what we can do about it in his 2012 TEDxYouth@BFS talk. Watch this 30-second clip.


Video clip transcript: “Are we asking our kids to collect dots or connect dots? Because we’re really good at measuring how many dots they collect, how many facts they have memorized, how many boxes they have filled in, but we teach nothing about how to connect those dots. You cannot teach connecting dots in a Dummies manual. You can only do it by putting kids into a situation where they can fail.”
—Seth Godin at TEDxYouth@BFS in the Youtube video STOP STEALING DREAMS

Stop collecting dots

Too many meetings continue to use short-term superficial evaluations as evidence for the efficacy of the event. We know that these kinds of meeting evaluations are unreliable (1, 2, 3).  Luckily there are better ways to find out whether participants have learned to better connect the dots. Here are four of them:

Instead, design meetings to connect the dots

Here are five suggestions:

Finally, an example of what can happen when you design meetings with these ideas in mind: Linda’s very different experiences at TradConf and PartConf.

P.S.

Today, Seth Godin posted this:

“Hardy came home from school and proudly showed his mom the cheap plastic trinkets he had earned that day.
‘I stood quietly on the dot and so I got some tickets. And if I stand on the dot quietly tomorrow, I can get some more prizes!'”
…
“Is standing on a dot the thing we need to train kids to do? Has each of us spent too much time standing on dots already?”
—On the dot, Seth Godin

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The meeting industry’s sound of silence

Monday, May 15th, 2023 by Adrian Segar

It’s time for a “sound of silence” roundup of meetings industry pet peeves.

“…the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence”
—Simon & Garfunkel – Sound Of Silence (1965)

Venue air quality is still a secret

How many venues have upgraded their HVAC systems in response to the COVID-19 pandemic? Unfortunately, only The Shadow knows! I’ve never seen a venue website that features air quality upgrades, though the information is sometimes available on an obscure page. These days, I’ve found that if I call a venue, they will usually tell me what they’ve done. If anything.

Meanwhile, news of outbreaks at meetings continues. Just last week, an outbreak of several dozen COVID-19 cases occurred at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual three-day Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) conference. If the CDC can’t prevent an outbreak at its own meeting, who can? (Answer, anyone who still takes COVID-19 seriously.)

It’s true that COVID-19 is not quite as serious an illness as it was in the earlier stages of the pandemic for most people. Death rates in the U.S. are now down to around a mere 1,000 a week. It’s still one of the top ten reasons people die. But with elderly and immunocompromised people at high risk, and the unknown chance of contracting Long COVID, the meeting industry is still largely shirking its duty of care.

A hat tip to the Javits Center and The Venetian for having done the work! Who else has upgraded their air filtration systems to MERV 13 or better? Share in the comments!

The meeting industry’s dirtiest secret

Sadly, the meeting industry makes no meaningful attempt to discover (let alone evaluate) the long-term value of a meeting to attendees!

If you think about it, this is shocking. We spend vast sums of money and devote countless person-hours to holding a meeting. Yet we have no idea whether it made any significant long-term difference to the people who attended it!

Check out the above link for three tools you can use to explore the long-term impact of an event.

But I’m not holding my breath that any of them will be routinely deployed at meetings soon.

The continuing takeover of meeting industry education by suppliers with deep pockets

In my opinion (and many other event professionals with whom I’ve spoken), the educational content at the national meeting industry events these days is sub-par. I suspect it’s because the processes for choosing it are seriously flawed and completely opaque. Educational programs remain dominated by representatives of suppliers and sponsors who provide significant income to the industry association.

I’m not saying supplier and sponsor employees are incapable of providing good education, but there are a host of independent educators (yes, like myself) who have been relegated to the sound of silence over the last fifteen years. This is largely due to our unwillingness to share our valuable experience and experience at our own expense (no fee, no coverage of travel, meals, or accommodation.)

Don’t pay presenters unless they’re big names

Following up on the previous peeve. I’ve written a couple of posts (1, 2) about the reluctance of the meeting industry to pay presenters unless they are household names and are seen as “inspirational.”

Nothing has changed in the last ten years.

Fighting the sound of silence

A black and white photo of Simon and Garfunkel singing "The sound of silence"

“Hello, darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again…
…People hearing without listening”

I’m going to close with a short tribute to someone in our industry who personifies the opposite of the sound of silence.

Her name is Joan Eisenstodt. Anyone who is truly listening will hear her. For decades she has spoken out about a myriad of often-overlooked issues in the meeting industry—the lack of care for the safety and wellbeing of the venue and hospitality employees that make our meetings possible, the lip service paid to DEI, ableism, the underrepresentation of minorities and women in positions of power, and the dire consequences of political decisions made at both the Federal and State level—to name just a few.

I think many would agree with me that she has been and remains the voice of conscience of our industry.

It’s a hard road to travel. I know I sometimes feel discouraged that some of the ideas I have shared have not become as widely accepted as I would like. So I wrote this to her recently:

“Dear Joan,
Sometimes it feels as though no one is listening and our efforts are fruitless. But, Joan, I hope you know that you do make a difference. Many people listen to you. Many are influenced in ways you’ll never know. In my case, you have inspired me over the years to speak out more about important issues. You have influenced me, and I am grateful for it. And so are many in our industry. You fight the good fight and make good trouble. Bless you for it.”

Let’s dispel the sound of silence as Joan does. Our industry will be a better place when we do.

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Why switching to active learning is hard — and worth it

Monday, September 16th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

switching to active learning: a photograph of two students sitting next to each other in a classroom looking at a set of notes together. Image attribution: Inside Higher Ed & Kris Snibbe / Harvard UniversityA September 2019 research study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences clearly illustrates why switching to active learning is hard — and worth it!

Lecturing has been the core modality in our education systems for centuries. Sadly it still is, even though we know that active learning provides superior quantity, quality, accuracy, and retention of knowledge. Active learning beats the pants off the “receiving knowledge” model drummed into our heads through years of listening to teachers. (For a full explanation of why active learning modalities are superior, see Chapter 4 of my book The Power of Participation.)

So why do we continue to use broadcast-style formats?

The NAS study gives us some important new information:

“[M]ost college STEM instructors still choose traditional teaching methods…We find that students in the active classroom learn more, but they feel like they learn less. We show that this negative correlation is caused in part by the increased cognitive effort required during active learning.“
—Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom, L Deslauriers, L S McCarty, K Miller, K Callaghan, and G Kestin

Let’s look at these three conclusions in the context of meeting design.

Most meeting presenters still lecture

The majority of college STEM teachers choose traditional teaching methods. And most meeting session presenters resort to lecturing as their dominant session modality.

Attendees learn more when presenters use active learning modalities

We have had research evidence for the effectiveness of active learning modalities for more than a hundred years. (The pioneer of memory retention research, Herman Ebbinghaus, published his seminal work in 1885.)

A large body of research over the last twenty years clearly shows the superiority of active over passive learning.

“Students learn more when they are actively engaged in the classroom than they do in a passive lecture environment. Extensive research supports this observation, especially in college-level science courses (1 2 3 4 5 6). Research also shows that active teaching strategies increase lecture attendance, engagement, and students’ acquisition of expert attitudes toward the discipline (3 7 8 9).

College students are the focus of this research. There’s no reason to believe that these conclusions would not apply to adult learning during meeting sessions.

Superstar lecturers and motivational speakers

Here’s a striking conclusion from the NAS research:

“Students in active classrooms learned more (as would be expected based on prior research), but their perception of learning, while positive, was lower than that of their peers in passive environments. This suggests that attempts to evaluate instruction based on students’ perceptions of learning could inadvertently promote inferior (passive) pedagogical methods. For instance, a superstar lecturer could create such a positive feeling of learning that students would choose those lectures over active learning.“

Including highly paid keynote speakers at meetings is a meeting industry fixation. I’ve argued that the evaluations of such sessions are unreliable. Now, the NAS research buttresses my point, by providing an important explanation of why expensive keynote lectures are so popular at meetings. People perceive that they learn more from a smooth lecturer, while the reality is that they learn less!

Conclusion

There is overwhelming evidence that we can improve meetings by switching to active learning from passive lectures. And we now know that the popularity of fluent lectures, as measured by session evaluations, is based on an incorrect belief by attendees that they are learning more than they actually do.

Finally, the NAS report indicates that a simple intervention can overcome false perceptions about the efficacy of lectures.

“Near the beginning of a physics course that used… active learning …the instructor gave a 20-min presentation that started with a brief description of active learning and evidence for its effectiveness. …At the end of the semester, over 65% of students reported on a survey that their feelings about the effectiveness of active learning significantly improved over the course of the semester. A similar proportion (75%) of students reported that the intervention at the beginning of the semester helped them feel more favorably toward active learning during lectures.”

Consequently, we need to educate stakeholders, presenters, and meeting attendees about the benefits of active learning modalities at meetings.

Image attribution and the original inspiration for this post: Inside Higher Ed & Kris Snibbe / Harvard University

Thank you Stephanie West Allen for bringing the above research to my attention!

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Nine conference mythodologies

Monday, May 14th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

Nine conference mythodologies: A photograph of a yellow Lego warrior wearing a red cape and shield and holding a silver sword. Image attribution: Flickr user dunechaser.Long ago, consultant Tom Gilb coined the term “mythodology” to describe erroneous but commonly held beliefs about how something should be done. Here are nine conference mythodologies.

Mythodology: We know what our attendees want to learn about

Reality: No, you don’t. At least half the sessions programmed at traditional conferences are not what attendees want.

Mythodology: Event socials are a good way to meet people

Reality: People tend to stay with people they already know at event socials. Participant-driven and participation-rich events provide far more opportunities to meet people you actually want to meet.

Mythodology: A “conference curator” can improve the quality of your conference content

Reality: Sadly, conference curators don’t exist. However, discovering the content wants and needs of participants at the event and satisfying them with the collective resources in the room is routinely possible and significantly improves the quality of your conference content.

Mythodology: Learning occurs through events

Reality: Learning is a continual process; formal events only contribute a small percentage to the whole.

Mythodology: Conference programs should be stuffed full of sessions so there’s something of interest for everyone

Reality: Downtime is essential for effective learning and connection, so providing conference white space is essential. (Trick: Stuff your program if you must, but give attendees explicit permission to take their own downtime when they need it.)

Mythodology: Adding novelty to a meeting makes it better

Reality: Novelty is a one-time trick. Next time it’s old. But making your meeting better lasts. Go for better, not just different.

Mythodology: Big conferences are better conferences

Reality: Better for the owners perhaps (if the meeting is making a profit) but not better for participants. Today’s most successful conferences are micro conferences. (And, by the way, most conferences are small conferences.) 

Mythodology: We know what attendees like, don’t like, and value about our meeting

Reality: If you’re using smile sheets or online surveys, you’re learning nothing about the long-term value of your meeting. This is the meeting industry’s biggest dirty secret. Use long-term evaluation techniques [1] [2] instead.

Mythodology: We can contract a venue for our meeting before we design it

Reality: Sounds silly when put like that, but it happens all the time. Designing your meeting and then choosing a venue that can showcase your design will improve your meeting experience (and can save you big bucks!)

I bet you can think of more than these nine conference mythodologies. Share them in the comments!

Image attribution: Flickr user dunechaser

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What your conference evaluations are missing

Monday, November 13th, 2017 by Adrian Segar

conference evaluations: a photograph of a milk carton with a message on the side "MISSING: HAVE YOU SEEN ME?" surrounding an evaluation sheetOne of the easiest, yet often neglected, ways for meeting professionals to improve their craft is to obtain (and act on!) client feedback after designing/producing/facilitating an event. So, I like to schedule a thirty-minute call at a mutually convenient date one or two weeks after the event, giving the client time to decompress and process attendee conference evaluations.

During a recent call, a client shared their conference evaluation summaries that rated individual sessions and the overall conference experience.

This particular annual conference uses a peer conference format every few years. The client finds the Conferences That Work design introduces attendees to a wider set of peer resources and conversations at the event. This year, The Solution Room, was a highly rated session for building connections and getting useful, confidential peer consulting on individual challenges.

As the client and I talked, we realized that the evaluations had missed an important component. We were trying to decide how frequently the organization should alternate a peer conference format with more traditional approaches. However, we had no attendee feedback on how participants viewed the effectiveness of the annual event for some key performance indicators (KPIs):

  • making useful new connections;
  • building relationships;
  • getting current professional wants and needs met; and
  • building community.

Rating your KPIs

Adding ratings of these KPIs to conference evaluations provides useful information about how well each event performs in these areas. Over time, conveners will see if/how peer conference formats improve these metrics. I also suggested that we include Net Promoter Scores in future evaluations.

The client quickly decided to include these ratings in future conference evaluations. As a result, our retrospective call helped us to improve how participants evaluate his events. This will provide data that will allow more informed decisions about future conference design decisions.

Do your evaluations allow attendees to rate the connection and just-in-time learning effectiveness of your meeting? Do they rate how well your meeting met current professional wants and needs? If not, consider adding these kinds of questions to all your evaluations. Over time you’ll obtain data on the meeting designs and formats that serve your participants best.

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Ask Me Anything About Conference Panels—Annotated Video

Monday, July 25th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

I guarantee you will learn many new great ideas about conference panels from this Blab of my Thursday chat with the wonderful Kristin Arnold. I’ve annotated it so you can jump to the good bits . (But it’s pretty much all good bits, so you may find yourself watching the whole thing. Scroll down the whole list; there are many advice gems, excellent stories and parables, folks show up at our homes, Kristin sings, etc.!) With many thanks to Kristin and our viewers (especially Kiki L’Italien who contributed mightily) I now offer you the AMA About Conference Panels annotated time-line.

[Before I turned on recording] We talked about: what panels are and aren’t; the jobs of a moderator; panel design issues; some panel formats; and our favorite panel size (Kristin and I agree on 3).

[0:00] Types of moderator questions.

[1:30] Using sli.do to crowdsource audience questions.

[2:40] Panel moderator toolboxes. One of Kristin’s favorite tools: The Newlywed Game. “What word pops into your mind when you think of [panel topic]?”

[4:30] Audience interaction, bringing audience members up to have a conversation; The Empty Chair.

[6:00] Preparing panelists for the panel.

[9:10] Other kinds of panel formats: Hot Seat, controversial topics.

[12:00] Continuum/human spectrograms/body voting and how to incorporate into panels.

[13:50] Panelist selection.

[14:40] Asking panelists for three messages.

[16:30] How the quality of a moderator affects the entire panel.

[17:30] More on choosing panelists.

[18:30] How to provoke memorable moments during panels; Kristin gives two examples involving “bacon” and “flaw-some“.

[20:30] Panelist homework. Memorable phrases: “The phrase that pays“; Sally Hogshead example.

[23:00] Panelists asking for help. Making them look good.

[24:10] Warming up the audience. The fishbowl sandwich: using pair-share as a fishbowl opener.

[25:30] Other ways to warm up an audience: pre-panel mingling, questions on the wall, striking room sets.

[26:30] Meetings in the round.

[28:00] Kristin’s book “Powerful Panels“, plus a new book she’s writing.

[29:00] Pre-panel preparation—things to do when you arrive at the venue.

[30:00] Considerations when the moderator is in the audience.

[31:00] Panelist chairs: favorite types and a clever thing to do to make panelists feel really special.

[32:50] Where should the moderator be during the panel? Lots of options and details.

[36:20] A story about seating dynamics from the late, great moderator Warren Evans.

[37:50] The moderator as consultant.

[38:40] Goldilocks chairs.

[39:40] Adrian explains the three things you need to know to set chairs optimally.

[41:00] “Stop letting the room set being decided for you,” says Adrian, while Kristin sees herself as more of a suggester.

[44:40] When being prescriptive about what you need is the way to go.

[46:30] Ideas about using screens at panel sessions.

[49:00] The UPS truck arrives at Adrian’s office door!

[50:00] Using talk show formats for panels: e.g. Sellin’ with Ellen (complete with blond wig.)

[52:20] Kristin’s gardener arrives!

[53:40] American Idol panel format.

[55:20] Oprah panel format.

[55:50] Control of panels; using Catchbox.

[56:20] Ground rules for the audience.

[59:10] What to say and do to get concise audience comments.

[1:00:00] A sad but informative story about a panelist who insisted on keeping talking.

[1:03:20] The Lone Ranger Fantasy.

[1:04:00] The moderator’s job, when done well, is pretty thankless.

[1:05:30] How you know if a panel is good. (Features mind meld between Kristin & Adrian!)

[1:06:10] The end of the fishbowl sandwich.

[1:07:40] Room set limitations caused by need to turn the room.

[1:10:00] Language: ground rules vs covenant; “Can we agree on a few things?”; standing to indicate agreement.

[1:13:00] You can’t please everyone.

[1:14:20] Kristin breaks into song!

[1:15:00] Non-obvious benefits obtained when you deal with an audience’s top issues.

[1:15:50] Why you should consider responding to unanswered attendee questions after the panel is over.

[1:16:40] The value (or lack of value) of evaluations.

[1:18:00] Following up on attendee commitments.

[1:20:00] Immediate evaluations don’t tell you anything about long term attendee change.

[1:21:10] “Panels are like a Wizard of Oz moment.”

[1:22:30] “Panels reframe the conversation in your head.”

[1:25:00] Kristin’s process that quickly captures her learning and future goals; her continuous improvement binder.

[1:26:40] Closing thoughts on the importance of panels, and goodbye.

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Two ways to take a hard look at conference evaluations

Monday, March 21st, 2016 by Adrian Segar

hard look at conference evaluations: an illustration of people looking at evaluation formsLet’s take a hard look at conference evaluations. Seth Godin wrote a great blog post about survey questions, and applying two of his insights will improve any conference evaluation.

First, ask yourself the following about every question you ask:

Are you asking questions capable of making change happen?
After the survey is over, can you say to the bosses, “83% of our customer base agrees with answer A, which means we should change our policy on this issue.”

It feels like it’s cheap to add one more question, easy to make the question a bit banal, simple to cover one more issue. But, if the answers aren’t going to make a difference internally, what is the question for?
—Seth Godin

In other words, if any question you ask doesn’t have the potential to lead you to change anything, leave it out!)

Second, think about Seth’s sobering experience when responding to “Any other comments?” style questions:

Here’s a simple test I do, something that has never once led to action: In the last question of a sloppy, census-style customer service survey, when they ask, “anything else?” I put my name and phone number and ask them to call me. They haven’t, never once, not in more than fifty brand experiences.

Gulp. Would your evaluation process fare any better? As Seth concludes:

If you’re not going to read the answers and take action, why are you asking?

Take a hard look at your conference evaluations. You may be surprised by what you find.

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The Reminder—a new way to obtain long-term evaluations of events

Monday, November 9th, 2015 by Adrian Segar

the reminder: a black-and-white photograph of a man sitting on a bench and reading a letterCan conference organizers get evaluative feedback on the long-term outcomes of their events? Check out The Reminder and find out!

Last week, I pointed out that short-term evaluations routinely solicited at events are unreliable. If we want to honestly learn whether our conferences create long-lasting change, we need evaluation methods to apply after an appropriate length of time (three months? six months? a year?—you choose!) rather than within a few hours or days of the meeting taking place.

Here’s one way I’ve devised to obtain long-term feedback. It’s based on an old technique, “A Letter To Myself” (ALTM, aka “A Letter To My Future Self”) which you may have experienced at meetings over the years.

I call it The Reminder.

In the standard ALTM version, described in Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love, the organizers set aside around 30 minutes just before the end of the event, supply each participant with notepaper and an envelope, and ask them to reflect on the changes they would like to make in their lives as a result of the event over the next [3 months/6 months/year/appropriate period]. People then write letters to themselves about their changes. They put the letters into the supplied envelopes, seal and self-address them and hand them in. After the announced period, the meeting organizers mail the letters.

ALTM works because the recipients find value in being reminded of their resolutions after time has passed. They can note what they have accomplished, what is yet to be done, and what they may have forgotten but still have the energy to pursue.

When I run a Personal Introspective at the end of a peer conference, I often add the ALTM exercise to provide a personal “tickler” reminder of the changes participants decide to make.

The Reminder

To modify ALTM to incorporate long-term feedback, add the following to the envelope supplied to each participant:

the reminderBefore the end of the ALTM session, briefly go through the feedback form with the group. Explain that completing the form on receipt and promptly mailing it back will provide the conference organizers valuable information about the long-term effectiveness of the conference, and this will help make the event even better next time.

It’s harder to implement long-term evaluations of our events because participants have less motivation to provide the information we need. The Reminder combines the effect of receiving the participant-created letter with a quick request for feedback. You can increase motivation by adding an incentive for returning the feedback form, like a small prize or a chance to win a raffle from those who return the form. In this case, name/contact information should be added to the form.

What do you think? Can The Reminder be a useful tool for evaluating your events? If you use it, share how it worked in the comments below.

Photo attribution: Flickr user gufoblu

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Why meeting evaluations are unreliable and how we can improve them

Monday, November 2nd, 2015 by Adrian Segar

meeting evaluations are unreliable: an illustration of a skeptical person receiving forms from the hands of many peopleTraditional meeting evaluations are unreliable. We obtain them within a few days of the session experience. All such short-term evaluations of a meeting or conference session possess a fatal flaw. They tell you nothing about the long-term effects of the session.

What is the purpose of a meeting? Excluding special events, which are about transitory celebrations and entertainment (nothing wrong with these, but not what I’m focusing on here), isn’t the core purpose of a meeting to create useful long-term change? Learning to apply productively in the future? Connections that last and reward? Communities that grow and develop new activities and purpose? These are the key valuable outcomes that meetings and conferences can and should produce.

Unfortunately, humans are poor objective evaluators of the enduring benefits of a session they have just experienced.

Why are we poor evaluators in the short term?

Probably the most significant reason for being poor evaluators in the short term is that we are far more likely to be influenced by our immediate emotional experience during a session than by the successful delivery of what eventually turn out to be long-term benefits. We like to think of ourselves as driven by rationality. But as Daniel Kahneman eloquently explains in Thinking, Fast and Slow we largely discount the effects that our emotions have on our beliefs. Information provided by lectures and speeches is mostly forgotten within a week. But the short-term emotional glow fanned by a skillful motivational speaker can last long enough for great marks on smile sheets. Paradoxically, the long-term learning that can result from well-designed experiential meeting sessions may not be consciously recognized for some time.

Other reasons why evaluations of conference sessions can be unreliable include quantifiable reason bias (the distortions that occur when attendees are asked to justify their evaluations) and evaluation environment bias (evaluations are influenced by the circumstances in which they’re made). These biases are minimal if we receive evaluations from the environment in which participants can implement hoped-for learning: i.e. back in the world of work. But instead—worried that no one will provide feedback if we wait too long—we supply evaluation sheets to fill out at the session or push evaluation reminders right away via a conference app.

How can we improve meeting evaluations?

Want meeting evaluations to reflect real-world long-term change? Then we need to use evaluation methods that allow participants to report on their meeting experiences’ long-term effects.

This is hard—much harder than asking for immediate impressions. Once away from the event, memories fade. Our professional lives center around our day-to-day work, and we are less open to refocusing on the past.

While I haven’t formulated a comprehensive approach to evaluating long-term change related to meetings, I think an effective long-term meeting evaluation should include the following activities:

  • Individual participants document perceived learning and change resolutions before the meeting ends.
  • Follow-up with participants after an appropriate time to determine whether their chosen changes have occurred.

In my next post, I’ll share a concrete example of one way to implement a long-term evaluation that incorporates these components.

Photo attribution: Flickr user jurgenappelo

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Do you review event evaluations like a Chinese censor?

Monday, April 13th, 2015 by Adrian Segar

event evaluations: black and white photograph of a standing Chinese official pointing to the screen of a computer used by a seated civilian. Photo attribution: Flickr user charleshopeA fascinating piece of research published in Science concludes that the Chinese government allows people to say whatever they like about the state, its leaders, or their policies—except for posts with collective action potential, which are far more likely to be censored. This reminds me of the meetings industry’s common response to event evaluations.

What do stakeholders do with event evaluations?

I often wonder whether organizers actually read event evaluations. And, if they read them, do they act upon them? Given the same old event designs I see repeated year after year, my experience is that most changes stemming from attendee feedback concentrate on logistical improvements or cosmetic restyling: changes that rarely get to core dissatisfactions experienced by many attendees.

This is why the bar is so low for event expectations. The majority of attendees assume that an event can’t be much better than what they routinely experience. Ask attendees what they consider to be a worthwhile meeting. You’ll frequently hear that they’re satisfied if they “learn one useful thing or meet one useful person a day”. You may think that’s acceptable. I know we can do much better.

Use event evaluations to improve future meetings

Can we significantly improve our events through attendee feedback? Yes. Done right, event evaluations provide an incredible opportunity to build community around our events. Yet, invariably, we squander this opportunity. Evaluations—either in the form of paper smile sheets or online surveys—get kidnapped, disappearing into the hands of the event organizers, never to see the light of day again.

When we routinely solicit comments about our meetings’ value and then ignore feedback that could fundamentally improve our events we are acting like Chinese censors. The minority of attendees who have experienced the value of participant-driven and participation-rich meeting designs—who know the value of small group work with peers and public evaluation during the event—expect something better from your meetings. If you don’t give it to them, they will stay away or go elsewhere.

A warning. They won’t be a minority forever.

Photo attribution: Flickr user charleshope

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