A Two-Word Speaker-Evaluation Strategy.
In the recent past, I have spoken at a variety of groups, organizations, associations, and random initials, like LMA, ALA, LCA, LAW, Legus, Meritas, and NALP*. I have spoken dozens of times to many of these groups, and so am very familiar with the needs, interests, and personalities of their audiences.
That is, I know what they like to learn about, and how they like their speeches organized and presented. I’m confident that I’ll receive high marks from these particular groups. They’re my people.
But this was just my second time speaking at the NALP annual conference. The National Association of Law Placement (NALP) has a widely varied audience, including representatives of law schools, law firms, and disparate consultants, including recruiters/headhunters, placement professionals, legal hiring and training professionals, diversity experts, and much more.
I spoke about “Standing Out in a Crowd,” basically marketing an organization’s most-important practices and industries. The audience was attentive, and I thought the speech was going well. But you can’t always tell. I like to know for sure.
Today, nearly all conference evaluations are conducted online, often long after the attendees return to work. That’s messed up. The attendees often do not receive the evaluations for weeks. Obviously, this is much easier for the conference organizers, and provides electronic data that is easy to collect and sort. No labor-intensive data entry is required. Input errors are reduced.
But I just don’t trust the results.
Once I return to the office I can’t remember their presentations.
Heck, I can’t even remember the speakers’ names. The accuracy of any online evaluation I would provide feels arbitrary, particularly with speakers I don’t know intimately. So I rarely evaluate any speaker I don’t know.
The lengthy (and well-organized) NALP conference had over 100 programs and speakers. Some speakers were great. Others I saw simply weren’t. 100 presenters is a lot. So I was concerned that a new NALP audience would not remember me weeks later, which could make it hard to get accurate data. And like any professional speaker, I value accurate attendee feedback.
So, just for my own edification, I conducted a quick, real-time, two-word survey. I offered to send a .pdf of the PPT slides to anyone who dropped off a card. All they had to do was write on it a single adjective and a 1-5 evaluation (from “terrible” to “terrific”). I’ve found that the objective numbers are helpful, but the single adjectives can be especially interesting.
Below are photos of the 1-5 numbers written on the cards. Eleven 4s, two 4.5s, and nineteen 5s. The most interesting part for me was that clearly the most-frequently used adjective (10 out of 35, or 28%) was a relatively uncommon word, “Engaging,” which has its own column (on the right).
“Engaging.” Fascinating… 
It seemed like a simple, practical way to take the pulse of the audience, without subverting the official online evaluation process.
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