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Conference bingo

Conference bingo

Background

In many tech conferences, attendees are invited to rate the talk and/or the speaker from 1 to 5 stars. This type of ratings is interesting but has a few drawbacks.

The discussion started as a twitter thread with this french proposition.

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  • As a speaker, if you get a 1/5, you don’t always know why (and what to improve).

  • As a speaker, if you get 5/5, you may think the audience liked the talk for the demos while they actually liked the diagrams explanations.

  • As an attendee, you’re looking for talks to watch on YouTube. How do you chose between 10 talks that have a 4.5/5 rate?

  • As a conf organizer, how do you know why this speaker/talk was liked or not?

  • …​

Proposition

A different approach would be to provide (as an app/website) a bingo grid with ready to use feedbacks. Examples in english would be:

  • I learn something

  • Too fast

  • Very interesting

  • FUN!

  • I loved the demos

  • Hard to understand

  • A bit boring

  • I understood absolutely nothing

  • Not deep enough

  • Not enough demos/examples

  • Too complicated

  • Best talk ever

  • …​

And the list goes on.

Open questions

I think each conference could come up with it’s own grid (variation on language obviously but also according to types of talks).

  • Would a 3x3 grid or 4x4 be enough?

  • Could we allow the speaker to provide a complimentary row of feedbacks like:

    • I liked the first part about X

    • The demo about Y was not very production ready

    • The slide deck was ugly

  • How can we create some kind of hall of fame? (most interesting talk, best demos…​)

  • Should we try to elaborate a rate from the grid?

What do you think?

@helaili
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helaili commented Apr 12, 2017

I think the #1 problem to fix is the feedback rate. Whatever the system is, conclusion can't be relevant when only 10% of the audience participate. Therefore, 👍 for gamification and/or rewarding feedback.

@jefBinomed
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I already try the gamification and it doesn't work for the moment... Even if i offer something cool, people don't take the time...
The moment where we get the most feedback was when i ask to attendees after the event. But definitly your idea is good and there is something that we have to try.

@ncomet
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ncomet commented Apr 13, 2017

Yes, I've noticed if you don't remind the audience to vote, they usually are less inclined to do so. +1 for an entertaining experience.

What I have seen working for long conferences (>45min) is a sli.do shared by QR code. It helps people interact because they find it funny to ask questions, especially in an anonymous way. Speaker would make 2~3 sli.do breaks to answer top 3 best graded questions.

And also, sli.do has a survey mode.
Thing is, sli.do has to be created conference by conference, speaker by speaker, not at a whole global conference scale. (I thought about that because it can be used as a source of inspiration)

@jgrenat
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jgrenat commented Apr 13, 2017

@ncomet I've seen someone using sli.do this year at devoxx and it's definitely something I'd like to try. But as you said, I don't think it's really suited for talks below 1 hour.

@hsablonniere
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hsablonniere commented Apr 20, 2017

The Mix-IT conference used the idea with a paper poster format and color stickers 😍

https://twitter.com/guillaumeehret/status/855021145191534592

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