Chris:

I stopped bringing the pad/backpack to sessions. In this day of electronic tools (isn't what we're all there for?), I try and get my info into my 'system of choice' as quickly as possible. That may be in 'memo pad' on my BlackBerry that syncs with Notes, or straight into Journal from my laptop.

I would love to see a more pronounced entry point into the eval web site than a link in an email. Best yet would be a link on the session calendar entry that is created in "My Sessions". Then it would be easy enough to click and eval. BUT . . . PLEASE LOTUS, have a professional designer design the web eval! If you have the title and presenters, then DON'T ask me if this is a BOF, Session, Keynote AND DON'T ask me the presenters' names. You already know that. Clean up the form for mobile entry and BANG. Evals in a minute at the end of the session. As it was last month, I waited until the end of the day to do all the evals for that day since WiFi was iffy in most session halls (another sore point of a Collaboration Conference).

Guys, it's important to turn in evals no matter what. If you thought the speaker did well, your evals will help bring that speaker back to the next Lotusphere (or other conferences). If you have constructive criticism, many speakers take such things very seriously. In fact, I'm mentoring a first-time Lotusphere speaker, and we're going to sit down and go through his evals together.

Sure, you're going to get some...interesting comments on evals. My personal favorite was "great speaker, great content, but he really needs to wear a t-shirt." (Fixating on my chest hair? My sweat?) That was counterbalanced by "Great information, much needed - and it doesn't hurt that the speaker is so sexy." *grin*

I agree wholeheartedly with John's points about making the submission of evals easier, but please Please PLEASE do us the favor of getting us your feedback, positive or negative.

I had good attendance in my session, and lots of people came up after excited to ask questions, but crazy low eval submissions. Which I assume IBM will take as a lack of interest in the session.

@3 Carl - everyone had low eval counts. I haven't heard from anyone with over 100. I did two sessions, spoke to at least 500 people, and got 35.

I think the eval situation is bad - and it mimics the session planner situation as a while ago. Just like Ben made the session database and Tim Davis have extended it, maybe it's time to do the same with evals. Let's build our own system - web and mobile ready.

The RIM BlackBerry conference has an amazing system for speaker and session feedback. You get an email from the conference with a link to the session evaluation form on your mobile device. You get this email - 5-10 MINS before the scheduled end of the session. So - if you are still in the session you get the eval form in your email / on your device during the session. They know who is in the session because they are sure to scan every badge of every attendee before they go into the conference session. It works!

As a former instructor, I understand the importance of the evals. I filled out one for every session I attended because the speakers want to know and IBM wants to know.

However, there should be an easier process for doing this.

I've yet to get any feedback from my BOF, because everyone in the room filled out a paper eval. I didn't look, I just handed them to the attendant outside the room and figured I'd be seeing them soon. I've yet to see one of them and the response I got from IBM is that don't have them back yet. Those paper evals are sent off to some other site to be entered and it hasn't happened yet.

It's a major fail on their part.

I will say this about the speakers. Every session that I attended this year was rock solid. The speakers were great and well prepared. 100% better than what I saw at LS09 (I was very disappointed in many of the session I attended that year.)

Well said Chris

I go though each eval, at every conference. They day you don't care about those things, you need to stop presenting.

So far the comments seem to be from the presenters point of view. As an attendee the view is different. I can give a few reasons for the lack of evals.

First off I will an eval for session / events that I stay in the same place all day, like training or Lotus Comes to you. Otherwise I will do it for bad presenters or information. I do it for someone I personally know but that is more of a Toastmaster review.

General Reasons:

1. Not enough time at the end to do it and get to next session.

2. what's in it for me?

3. I just paid $5k to come here and you want what?

4. A lot of people can either listne/learn or write not both. So doing eval during session is out. I'm one of these folks.

5. at the end of the day I'm too wiped to remember

and finally 6. what difference does it make to me? Really, if I don't like the presenter then I won't go see them again. The information changes so it won't be the same presentation next year.

Unless you can provide a reason it help the attendee, don't expect a change.

Maybe it's time to send a message to Sandra and the rest of the Lotusphere staff: ditch the yellow backpacks (and most of the hard-copy conference materials) and put the money into better mobile accessibility of conference info and on-line evals. Find a way to compensate sponsors for loss of their space in the printed materials by including sponsor links in the mobile and email content.

I don't know what the answer is, but I want them, read them, cajole people to fill them out and I've tried coming up with clever ways to get them submitted in the first place. We're tried a few things with UKLUG & ILUG, but I don't think we've got the perfect system yet :-(

If the session had short url so users could enter into a mobile phone or laptop easily and it brought up the eval - without need to login. It could be set to only allow access from the wifi network.

a url like: LS11.com/show102

Hand a paper eval in, get a coffee voucher. If the only way to get coffee was to fill in an eval, we'd probably see a high return. >:-)

I like The View conference method. Each attendee gets handed a blank eval upon entering the room. Even for those that can't multitask (like myself), I will take the time to fill it out before leaving to go to another session as it is already out and in my hand.

I also stressed the importance of the evals both before AND right at the end of my session. I'm not sure if the paper evals have been filled out yet. When people came up to me and said they liked my session, I said "Thanks! Be sure to say that in an evaluation." :-)

I'd love to see an eval in each chair as you walk in, an announcement as the speaker finishes them, and then an IBMer in the back collecting them in exchange for something free. I like to travel light, so the giant notepad gets dumped, and the electronic form is a bit too much like homework.

I believe at the BlackBerry conference they give a T-shirt to everyone that fills out the whole form. When the "where'd you get that T-shirt" starts, the evals get completed quick.

It's all about giving an incentive for the desired behavior and making it EASY.

I certainly understand the speakers' frustration. However, in evaluations like most surveys, if you get 10% of the population to respond, you have had a successful survey. Frustrating for the speakers? Yes. For IBM? Perhaps. Even with coffee vouchers, free beer, whatever, you will probably not get much over 10-20% returns.

I think that making it easier to do, shorter URLs, a more friendly system, will help. But cynically, I don't think that anyone will get 95% response. I don't even think that Conference Eval, which gets you a t-shirt, gets 95%.

My vote is for a touch screen console just inside each room so that attendees press two or three buttons to rate speaker/topic/matter etc on their way out. Cheap, relatively quick to do and if one wants to leave more detailed info, they can do so online.

I filled out evaluations. In fact, I ran out of eval sheets. I noticed that you can log in to lsonline.info and fill out evaluations online, but don't recall anyone saying that, or any advertising to that effect. I believe in giving feedback and encourage everyone to do so for each session they attend.

what we have done at our last Italian Lotus user group conference (dominopoint day):

(this was a 1 day event, so maybe this approach couldn't scale well):

- every one got a single sheet of paper, agenda in the front, session evaluations in the back.

- we had a nice giveaway gadget (a custom moleskine notebook) that you could only get if you give back the session evaluation filled when you leave the conference.

the result was that we had a proper session evaluation form from around 68% of the people attending, 2% of invalid session forms (things like all sessions filled with the same vote or no evaluations at all) and around 30% of the people who didn't even bothered to give back the evaluations paper and get the gadget.

the bad part was that we had to process all this forms by hand, and we've been grilled by the speakers until we've been able to send out the results.

While I was neither a presenter nor an attendee, I can only imagine how many people were in those sessions that have little to no interest in truly being there.

I'd venture to say, you might have to shave off 5-15% of attendees who are there as a week in Florida vacation people. People that should probably be fired from the company who put them there.

Maybe I am just too cynical, maybe 5-15% is too high (too low?), but those folks are never going to write an eval. Or maybe they will, in the same manner that a student who writes a nice eval of a substitute teacher who lets them play with their iPhones instead of classwork.

I have offered the organizers before to build in a mini-form in the sessions database (and presumably into the Blackberry and iPhone apps) that will send the eval in from there. It wouldn't make a huge difference, but anything that increases the ability to click and answer would help. IBM doesn't want to lose the control, but the percentage of evals now vs. five years ago is horrible.

@18 I'm sorry but I honestly believe you are way off the mark with your comment.

I'm sure if I was a speaker that I would feel the same way with regards to feedback, as an attendee my feeding back has declined over the years. The total truth is that when a session ends I'm off like a shot to get to the next session/drinks break/loo break. Hanging back to fill in the form (if I even have it with me) doesn't get a look-in.

This year I didn't login to LSOnline once - it has totally lost relevance for me. Like many I do download the electronic agenda and agree if feedback could be linked to this app I would be more likely to make use of it.

There is something in @8's comments regarding it being a paid conference and therefore, having consumed something you've paid for, having to complete feedback seems irksome. Have we all be dulled with endless web requests for surveys and customer feedback?

If I was attending a UserGroup event I would be more focused on feeding back to the presenters who (well in the past anyway) were perhaps newer / less experienced - in that environment it does feel like you are communicating back to the individual, rather than an IBM questionnaire at an IBM function.

By the way, the problem with paper forms, whether left on your chair or pulled from the notebook in your backpack, is that you've got to have a pen. I can't remember a Lotusphere where I hadn't lost the pen from my badge pack, or had it break, by the end of the first day.

@20 I do think @18 has a point to a certain extent, although I am not sure what the percentages should be.

I know for a fact there were attendees who were at LS10 because "IBM" paid for the ticket, transportation and hotel - never mind the fact that they are in the middle of a migration off the Lotus stack. I doubt these types of people would hand in the evals since they are obviously not there to learn anything about Lotus and their products.

@21 I paid my own way for all my Lotuspheres except for my first (damn they did it on purpose to get me hooked)

I always give evals as

1. I treat others as I would want to be treated. If I were a speaker I would want to hear feedback from my attendeed

2. I want IBM to know what I liked and what I didn't like. Hopefully my feedback will help shape future Lotushpehere's more to what I am looking for since I am the one paying for my ticket.

I think low eval count was partly due to a cost cutting measure. In past years, the had blanks at the door when you came into a session. A lot of people don't carry the forms around all day. A lot of people had blackberries, iPhones, Droids, etc. So an online eval would be one more way to make it easy for attendees to do evals. When I speak I hope for 30-50% evals but seldome get even that many. I do know that over half of the evals were blanks that people got at the door at the start (no perfs on the edges) so removing black evals for people coming in really hurt the responce rate.