[EuroPython] Future EPC evaluation form

[Magnus Lyckå]

At 10:39 2003-07-06 +0200, Laura Creighton wrote:
>I think that if you produce a standard form, you will structure all
>future conferences to try to 'beat the form'.  This often tends to
>limit creativity.  People try to incrementally improve on what they
>had before when it would be more fun to run a different sort of
>conference altogether.

I doubt the arrangers would take the evaluation form *that* seriously,
but I guess you have a point. If we always use the same form, the
arrangers might not be able to measure if *their* idea about a good
conference worked as intended.

There are some aspects of a conference like EPC that are relevant
every year. Perhaps the form should have some general questions
that stay more or less the same from year to year, and another part,
determined by the current organizers to verify if it seems to have
fulfilled the goals *they* set up for the conference.

The interest in this evaluation will vary between organizers, but I
think it would be useful to always get *some* questions asked.

I think questions like: "Was it easy to find information about
the conference?", "Why did you come?" or "Do you plan to come to
EPC next year as well?" could appear every year without spoiling
the creativity for the arrangers. Some things are always important,
and some questions might help us remember these things.

The general part of the conference will also change a bit over
time, but I think it's good to have some continuity there.

An evaluation form could have a similar role to unit tests in XP.
A tool that helps you understand what it is you want to achieve
before you do it, and a way to see if you did afterwards...

In contrast to unit tests, we can't expect 100% OK results, but
I think it's useful to learn what was considered strong and weak
points. I hope people are creative and clever enough to figure out
when to just make incremental improvements, and when to make more
drastic changes.



--
Magnus Lycka (It's really Lyckå), magnus@thinkware.se
Thinkware AB, Sweden, www.thinkware.se
I code Python ~ The Agile Programming Language