Freekshow

Last week I was involved in organizing a Scala workshop, and from the feedback we received it was notable that some of the issues that were mentioned were more to do with the expectation of participants than with the actual content.The average rating from the evaluation for this event was 7.3 (on a scale from 1 to 10), and while that might seem decent it is dramatically lower then scores for our previous events.Some of the feedback that was provided was very fair. For example, it was mentioned that the tempo could have been higher, and it could have. The typical participants of Devnology meetings have way more smarts and passion about them than any other group I have participated in, so we need to become better at tailoring our meetings accordingly.

Another point of criticism we received was that the facilitators did not seem to know all the ins and outs of the subject matter. This in my opinion is a result of the position we take in organizing these types of events: there should not be one expert explaining to the rest everything there is to know, but rather a situation where there’s enough preparation done to go through the material, and in the process learn from each other.

Under these conditions, chances are a lot bigger that it will be an interactive event, with active participation.

This way, you get to know the attendees, learn what knowledge and experience they can contribute, possibly even beyond the event itself. The meetings will become more lively and interesting, and more in line with the ideas behind the Unconference.

Having an expert capable of explaining everything on a particular subject may not improve the experience, expecially if you lose a level of interaction. We will therefore continue to encourage members of the community to take on a subject and create a learning events that is geared toward learning together.

Obviously, this will only be a success if the more knowledgeable participants are aware of this and willing to share their skills and ideas. If you are aware of points being missed or if you have information or skills that can contribute, one way to react it to sit back and be bored. It might however be better to ask yourself this question: what have I done to improve the experience of this event for some (or all) of the other participants?

Let me paraphrase what this guy said:

Ask not what your community can do for you, ask what you can do for your community! I don’t mean to sound obnoxious here and I certainly don’t want to put people off from attending. What I hope to achieve with this post is to make our viewpoints regarding these issues clear and hopefully prevent misunderstanding in the future.

Please feel free to respond!