Gary has an interesting post about conference feedback, in particular around the usefulness of a session. As both a speaker and organiser, I was going to reply in the responses, but maybe it’s worth a broader audience. Is the usefulness of a session actually relevant to anyone at all? I go to plenty of sessions that aren’t useful in my day to day job, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good session or I didn’t enjoy it. Here’s what I make the choice based on:

• Do I have a pressing need to learn the topic and will the session give me the knowledge I need? It’s mostly about pointers to the technology, the speaker’s insight, that one nugget of information that makes it worthwhile.
• Do I enjoy the speaker? Sometimes a session is worthwhile just because the speaker is entertaining, even if I know I’ll get nothing out of it.
• Is it something I know nothing about? I sometimes attend sessions I know will have little or no impact on my daily work, just because I feel I ought to have a passing knowledge of the topic; sometimes that’s even as slight as what the heck it is.
• Is it something I know I’ll never master? I’ll attend lots of design and user experience talks, because those are particular interests of mine. I know I have limited (none, some would say) design skills and am intensely jealous of people who do. But I go in the faint hope that some of the sparkle will rub off.

Assuming I stay through the session, or the majority of it at least, I’ll always leave feedback, because as a speaker I know I value that feedback. If I did badly I want to know why, which is why it’s so frustrating to receive a low score with no indication of why. I once had “terrible session” written alongside a low score; if I’m so bad, how am I going to know why you thought it was terrible? My response is “terrible feedback”. Still, it beats “didn’t like his accent”; sorry, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

Now technical knowledge, speaker ability, etc, are easier to score numerically, and these are valuable to the organiser. But usefulness? Maybe for a big conference, trying to gauge the sessions to include, but for smaller events such as DDD, where the topics are picked by the public? Don’t blame the conference or the speaker if it wasn’t useful, you picked it. Now it’s a different matter it the session didn’t match the abstract, as that’s what you made your decision on, and that is useful information; maybe the speaker didn’t write a concise enough abstract, or got off topic, or any number of other reasons, but don’t just say it wasn’t useful, say it didn’t match the abstract.

I’m not suggesting we get rid of usefulness altogether as a question, it can help balance the other scores (eg a new speaker, with nerves, who doesn’t perform well, but still provides useful information). Maybe we just need to force a textual response if the usefulness is scored low. Or perhaps if any session is scored low.

Once of the biggest problems conference organisers have is getting feedback, and therein lies an immediate dilemma. The paper feedback form, handed in at the end of a session (or the day) gives you the immediacy; you’re less likely to forget what you thought of the session, but sometimes you need time to think about it. Plus, the organisers need to type all this information in if they want any form of analysis. On the other hand, the online form is convenient for later analysis and probably easier for attendees, but lacks the the ability for immediate response, unless it’s available during the session and there’s a network connection available.

So ultimately this comes down to a plea. If you attend an event, no matter what size, and are asked for feedback, please give it; make it useful feedback though, tell us what did and didn’t work, what you liked and what you didn’t. Certainly for UK events, where we have an active community, all of that information gets shared, so all events benefit.