{"id":5703,"date":"2021-08-10T08:41:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T08:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/myb20wp.local\/?p=5703"},"modified":"2024-11-01T18:44:22","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T18:44:22","slug":"are-you-asking-the-right-questions-to-establish-your-events-value","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myb.net\/are-you-asking-the-right-questions-to-establish-your-events-value\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Asking the Right Questions to Establish Your Event\u2019s Value?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every conference attendee is familiar with the post-event evaluation forms that ask them to assess a conference or a particular presentation. Those surveys can provide a valuable sketch of the overall impression surrounding an event. But those evaluations may not tell you a lot about why attendees came in the first place. And perhaps more importantly, they tell you nothing about the people who decided not to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Too often, we find, associations aren\u2019t asking the right questions of attendees and nonattendees alike about a conference, and not identifying the right opportunities for attendees to respond. Doing it right demands a survey strategy that\u2019s designed to generate candid and actionable information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently we worked with an association in the biomedical field whose annual conference was underperforming financially. The association had a sense that the conference wasn\u2019t quite delivering value to attendees in the way it had promised. Attendees were reporting that they weren\u2019t likely to recommend the conference to colleagues. But what was driving that perception?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To answer that question, we took a layered approach. We first conducted interviews with key stakeholders around the conference, gathering qualitative information about how it was perceived relative to other similar gatherings. (Words like \u201ccliquish,\u201d \u201ccrowded,\u201d and \u201cstuffy\u201d came up.) We also conducted focus groups with association members, asking them how well the conference served them at their particular career stage, the quality of the presentations, and the networking opportunities. All revealed room for improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answers we received from those conversations informed the questions we asked in a quantitative survey we delivered to attendees and nonattendees of the most recent conference. If you decided to go, what were the main reasons? If you stayed home, why? We asked how satisfied attendees were with the conference, like the post event evaluation does. But we also asked:<\/p>\n\n\n\n