Mistakes are what endears you to others. At least I'm banking on that mantra in my own life.

Being the cynic that I am, did you happen to ask them what percentage of the total attendees completed evaluations, either by session or based on total registrants?

I ask this because I have been in conferences and seminars where I watch BUNCHES of people walk out of the session and leave the pretty pink and blue (not sure why they always seem to be Easter egg colours, but I digress) evaluation forms lying on the tables. While one presumes that anyone who hated the session might take the time to do an evaluation, those who were "eh" might not. And some people are just too lazy or too anxious to get to the next session.

Not that I'm trying to make excuses or anything, I'm just sayin'

Well, I figger that evaluation-apathy variable would hold true from conference to conference, and this conference apparently got better results than other conferences.

But it gets toward a damned good point.

I have a long, boring lecture about what I see as the incivility of the standard evaluation process:

Inviting speakers to a conference to speak for free and then, while introducing the person, reminding the audience, "Please fill out the speaker-evaluation form on your seat."

In other words, "Please let us know if this dude is good or if he sucks, okay? And don't forget, the whole time he's speaking, to evaluate his PowerPoint slides and his delivery style. You're a consumer first and a learner second!"

I favor sending people an e-mail note immediately AFTER the conference and sending them to a Web site to evaluate the speaker.

It's not a perfect method either, but we do it at the Speechwriters Conference and it garners a pretty decent response rate AND it lets speakers speak and attendees listen for CONTENT without having to evaluate the speaker in real time.

A day later, they still remember the duds, and they still remember the stars and nobody has been subtly humiliated or distracted in the process.

By all accounts, you, Keith and Donna did a super job at the IABC session - knowledgeable, informative and witty. I read the write-in remarks on the photo ethics session: mia culpa, Mia Culpa, MIA MAXIMA CULPA (Italian Catholic guilt for my fricken fault). I would have cut off my right arm to have been there. FORGIVE.

The Absent One,
Suzanne

Salvo, love means never having to cut off your right arm.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Remember, conference evaluations, for the most part, are subjective and can be influenced by a variety of factors, many outside of your control. In some cases you just get an audience that collectively is out of sync with your message or delivery style.

For example, I remember way back when being ranked either the #1 or #2 speaker at an IABC Canada Conference than getting panned a couple of weeks later giving the exact same presentation at a Ragan conference.

Of course I will never forget the IABC International Conference in 1994 when I sponsored Jeff Hallett's 3 hour presentation on the coming impact of computer-mediated communications and what that would mean for how businesses would interact with their customers and markets. At the break, almost 75% of the audience stormed out, loudly complaining that the material was a waste of their time, that it wasn't going to have anything to do with their jobs or the roles they were going to play in their companies in the future, etc.. etc.,

They were dead wrong of course, as history has proven. Surprisingly, however, Jeff scored rather well for his session (not that he really cared) since the 25% forward-thinking IABC members who didn't leave gave him good evaluations.

Hey Craig, thanks.

I've never been one to over-value quantitative surveys, but in this case they're all we've got. Do I still think some of the sessions I went to at IABC were absurd? Hell yes! Do I think I was my charming and effervescent self at this photo thing? Yes, plus I was enraged and cursing, which also makes for a surprising business conference session. So I felt I pulled my weight.

But my glib panning of other concurrent sessions, vs. the relatively low ratings of my own session pretty much forced me to do this mea culpa, especially to IABC brass, who I sometimes disagree with on some issues, but who works pretty hard, pretty smartly and occasionall pretty courageously to put on an interesting conference.

Yeesh, in 1994 my then-company had a halfway decent intranet that was growing. And I never saw them as that forward thinking!

Late to this discussion, but I'm disappointed that you apologized for expressing a legitimate opinion based on your experience at the conference (and your years of experience as a conference attendee).

RR's job is to do exactly what you did -- evaluate the conference from the standpoint of what it offers the profession. Even if your viewpoint does not mirror the collective wisdom of the sample of attendees who filled out evaluations, your opinion is valid and grounded.

Never apologize unless you make an actual mistake.

Well, Robert, if it's any consolation, being more careful next year won't mean holding back or waiting until the survey results are in.