The pain of the online Lotusphere survey system
Tags :Lotusphere Lotusphere2008
First, I appreciate each of every person who took the time to deal with this system to submit an evaluation for one of my sessions. You have shown much bravery and effort and should be commended.
Now then, let's begin. I love the approach and initiative the Lotusphere team took in making us more green. However, this was a huge failure in my eyes. Yes you had the choice to still do paper, so no complaints, you just had to go get the forms. But this new system was to revolutionize the way we did evals. From laptops, to Lotusphere kiosks to your handheld devices.
Handhelds are first. We could never get any device or browser type on the device to get past the splash screen. No not just mine, but four of us, that are reasonably skilled in these areas tried 4 different browsers on our Blackberrys including the standard and as far as Opera mini. All would let you type in your badge number and then immediately take you back to the splash screen. I finally tracked down where the link went and we got this first image.
The webpage, ugh. Why in the heck are we using a site that is handled by no-ip.com redirects and then has an incredibly awful interface for having a user do an eval. A nice tabbed interface lets you find the day and then the time of the session. Great start! But when I open the session I wanted, it does not populate the speakers names. I now have to go back to the guide to gather the speaker name. The type is also not filled in, yet it is known by the listing itself and is already categorized in the book.
Playing around we fincd out it is Domino all the way, including authentication.
No BOF's seemed to be listed for 7am, yet there was a category for them in the online form. When selecting a time slot it didn't highlight it so I forgot what time I just filled out a form for and had to go back to the book again.
Filling out an eval seems to be as easy as hitting this form.. without the session specified.
http://www3.channel1corp.com/na/ibm/ls2008b/rdtdb.nsf/usr.responseSet?openagent&m=read
So if you haven;'t guessed, all the work is being done by Channel1Corp, a real-time results company hosted in Rackspace.com's racks. Then, humorously, it was down today for a while for system maintenance. Not the best timing in the world.
So let's get this thing tested and flying for next year with a bunch of changes to make it work everywhere all the time in a better fashion.
blog comments powered by Disqus
On Thursday, January 24th, 2008 by Chris Miller
