Tag: speaking

I have seen more than a few posts about feedback that speakers get from sessions in the last couple months. Last week Buck Woody made an attempt to build a better form that could be used for feedback, which I like, but I think it’s a little too long for most events. If you attend 3-6 sessions in a day, filling out forums like this could be a chore.

Attendees Should Give Feedback

I know your time is valuable, but please give some feedback. I agree with Buck that the numeric scores are useless, but I know organizers wants something. If you liked the session, give it a 10, if it was OK, a 5, and if it didn’t work for some reason, drop a 1 in there and leave it at that. Let’s just make it a simpler system because no one knows what a 6 is vs a 7.

But Be Fair.

The way you perceive a session is not the way everyone else does. If you think the speaker was technically wrong, tell them. If they didn’t cover what was listed in the abstract, tell them. If they wandered around the topic without making sense, tell them.

But don’t mark up a form with bad scores because you didn’t like their music, or their shirt, or don’t agree with the approach or thought something was too (or not enough) technical. More often than not I find people are so subjective in this area, and the inappropriately send information to other attendees, or impact the speaker’s ability to present in the future.

If you have specific complaints, speakers would appreciate hearing them. You don’t have to rate everything, but give one specific piece of criticism that you’d want changed. One thing Buck does well is give you a chance to impact a presentation, and you ought to drop one written comment (not a score) on each evaluation you turn in.

If you don’t have something bad to say, say something.

I know that many evaluations are used for raffles, so please feel free to fill them out quickly, but I would appreciate some feedback. I do like seeing all 4s or 5s on my scores, but they often don’t help me improve the presentation. Give me one thought about what I could do better.

For Speakers

If you’re a speaker, you have some idea of what goes into building a presentation, writing a description, developing flow in your presentation, and pacing. Therefore, you ought to be able to evaluate a few things for other speakers.

You ought to be able to tell them if they hit their mark in terms of what they said they’d deliver. I think speakers often have a better perspective on evaluating this. Not that non-speaking attendees’ opinions don’t count, but they sometimes aren’t very well thought out

If you know the speaker, drop them an email, or take a (private) moment to give them an assessment of what you thought. I routinely let others know when I think they could improve something, or have approached a session in a way that turned me (or others) off.

If you don’t know the speaker, introduce yourself, and say “I have some constructive feedback on your session. You don’t have to do this, but I thought …”  and then explain your point of view. It’s not rude, or assuming, and believe me it’s appreciated.

Just be aware that it’s an opinion and don’t get upset if the speaker doesn’t make the change you mentioned. You’re still one of many, and while it’s nice to hear your opinion, it’s not a marching order.

I submitted three sessions to the 2011 Summit for consideration and I heard today that two of them were accepted, with the third being an alternate.

It’s nice to be accepted, especially as there is always a lot of competition for people to speak and there are tons of submissions each year. I don’t know the total this year, but I’m sure it was over 500 for 160 or so slots.

My two sessions are:

Branding Yourself for a Dream Job -The Modern Resume – Everyone wants a dream job that they enjoy going to each week. However finding that job, and getting yourself hired can be hard for most people. Steve Jones will give you practical tips and suggestions in this session that show you how to better market yourself, how to get the attention of employers, and help improve the chances that the job you want will get offered to you. Learn about networking, blogging, writing, speaking , and more from Steve Jones, who has successfully used these techniques to find his dream job.

(in the Professional Development Track, level 100)

The Top Ten SQL Server Skills You Need – Come learn the ten most important skills that every accidental DBA, developer, or even manager should be able to do in SQL server. If you want to know where to start working with SQL server or which 10 things will get you through most of your days, some see Steve Jones show you how to accomplish these ten important tasks and explain why they are important. These ten skills represent the 80/20 rule in action; if you can do these ten things, you can successfully get through most of your days at work.

(In Enterprise Database Administration and Deployment, level 100)

No idea on which days they’ll be there, but come join me if you’re interested.

I wasn’t sure that I would submit anything, but in the end I committed to a few events in Seattle and decided that this was something I should do. If I get selected it will save my boss some $$ and it’s part of what I should be doing for my job.

I’ve done 3 different presentations in the last year for various events and decided on submitting only one of them to the Summit. The other is a variation on one I’m building for SQL in the City. I built that one to show off some Red Gate tools, so the places where I show demos of tool stuff I’ll rip those out and go with generic solutions instead.

The last one actually came to me one night when I couldn’t sleep. I had been thinking about work and had an upset stomach one night. I was up a few times and while sitting on the edge of the tub, trying to decide if I should go back to bed or just give up, this presentation came to me. I had the iPad with me and spent about 45 minutes or so in Evernote, sketching the outline to the presentation in 10 parts, and then fleshing out 4 or 5 of them into a few paragraphs apiece.

Here are my three, and no idea how they’ll do against the competition, or even if the committee will consider them, but we’ll see.

Preparation for Disaster

Sooner or later some sort of disaster occur on your SQL Server instance. It might be the destruction of a server, the corruption of a page inside the database, or just the unexpected deletion of some data. When disaster does strike, will you be prepared? Steve Jones will cover a number of common disaster occurrences and the ways in which you can be prepared to handle the situations.

The Top Ten SQL Server Skills You Need

Come learn the ten most important skills that every accidental DBA, developer, or even manager should be able to do in SQL server. If you want to know where to start working with SQL server or which 10 things will get you through most of your days, some see Steve Jones show you how to accomplish these ten important tasks and explain why they are important. These ten skills represent the 80/20 rule in action; if you can do these ten things, you can successfully get through most of your days at work.

Branding Yourself for a Dream Job -The Modern Resume

Everyone wants a dream job that they enjoy going to each week. However finding that job, and getting yourself hired can be hard for most people. Steve Jones will give you practical tips and suggestions in this session that show you how to better market yourself, how to get the attention of employers, and help improve the chances that the job you want will get offered to you. Learn about networking, blogging, writing, speaking , and more from Steve Jones, who has successfully used these techniques to find his dream job.