Link the attendees and the decision-makers @ PyCon TW (part II)
Continue with my last post Link the attendees and the decision-makers via a questionnaire @ PyCon TW (part II), this time I will focus on the answering experience and the release channels.
Experience
With the suitable metrics, it turns to solve the attendees’ issues. How to make the express their true thoughts naturally? Like what they share with their friends excitedly, instead of finish the quizzes rapidly to replying to us.
In what situation will the attendees express thoughts naturally?
We need to figure that out and build a similar situation with limited resources and interactions. With a questionnaire, we only have text, some buttons, and a few minutes, these are all materials for the situation.
Online Chatroom
The first idea that break into my mind is “conversation”, or a more relaxed word, we called it “chat”. If we can interact with the attendee via a chat, it would be great!
But like the problems I mentioned above, we do not have enough time and an ideal site, so I need a plan B. Chat apps like Messenger, LINE, Discord solve the problem of distance and space effectively while maintaining feelings of chat, I think I can give this direction a try.
People will expect a response from each other staggered during a chat. If you send dozens of questions to your friend in one go, he or she probably feels irritating and not willing to answer them. Ask a question, and wait for the answer before another one would be a great choice.
Ways of asking a question
Another tip is to distinguish between “I want to know your answer” and “I want to know your thoughts”, take the following questions as examples:
What local delicates did you eat during the conference?
A. beef soup
B. fried noodles with eel
C. steamed egg rice
D. otherDid you eat any local delicates during the conference?
A. beef soup
B. fried noodles with eel
C. steamed egg rice
D. other
The first one looks like a Multiple Choice Question (MCQ), attendees will search for the items which fit their own situation directly. Of course, we can get the response, but we usually don’t chat like that.
The second one asks the attendees to tell us what they have eaten, this time they will think about how to explain to us first. And they can reply conveniently once they find the corresponding option, or write down by themselves if there is no one match.
Channels
Finally, it’s time to deliver our questions to the attendee. More precisely, it should be:
Deliver the right questions to the right person at the right time and the right place.
However, the reality may be more complicated, but we can not control everything. The only thing we can do is planning several releases channels and look forward to the questionnaires to reach our attendees at the right time.
One of the most important things we hope our attendees to take part in is the community tracks, which is scheduled in the afternoon of the second day. Although some of them will leave earlier if they are not interested in that, the feedback of the attendees who have not to experience the community track is meaningless for us.
We finally have to strike a balance between several defects. Compared to reach more people, high-quality feedbacks from high-engagement attendees are far more valuable in data-driven strategies.
At the same time, thinking in reverse is also indispensable:
Why should the attendees fill the questionnaire?
Lucky draw and rewards are very common-used tricks to increase the response rate, this makes the effort of filling out the questionnaire rewarding. However, PyCon Taiwan does not plan to provide tickets or souvenirs as rewards, we need other strategies.
Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to think more completely, and we finally release the questionnaire without any acknowledgment in the attendees’ effort. Hope we can have an ideal way to improve next year, and obtain more data to analyze through a higher response rate.
Conclusion
It’s a rare opportunity for me to reflect, plan, and responsible for obtaining data sources, this forced me to think from different aspects such as feasibility and effectiveness. I guess I still need about two weeks to deliver a presentation of insights and respond to the value proposition as much as possible.
Hope my experience in the technical conference and communities inspired you, thanks for your patient to read my story.
