Article Meetings / Events 2 min read

Event Pros: Learn To Love Post-Event Evaluations

The reaction from the crowd, warts and all, might not make for pleasant reading, but you'll be better for knowing it, conference expert Adrian Segar says. Also: what the negative reaction to Yahoo's new logo teaches about the branding process.

Ernie Smith

September 5, 2013

Heads up: this content is over 5 years old, so some information may be out of date.

Your annual meeting is over—time to start thinking about next year.

Seems a little quick, right? Well, with the right questions on your conference evaluations, you might be getting gold from members on how to make your event better.

What you can learn, and more, in today’s Social Media Roundup:

Evaluations aren’t fun, but …

Four important truths about conference evaluations #eventprofs  (opens in a new tab) #assnchat  (opens in a new tab) #mpi  (opens in a new tab) #pcma  (opens in a new tab) http://t.co/uVdPq17ZC4  (opens in a new tab) via @ASegar  (opens in a new tab)

— Tahira Endean CMP+ (@TahiraCreates) September 5, 2013  (opens in a new tab)

Conferences That Work author Adrian Segar would like to make a pitch for post-conference evaluations—not always the most exciting things in the world, but if you’re looking for the right information, they might prove more essential than you think. Among the tips in his recent post on the matter  (opens in a new tab)? Learn to accept that not everything you read in these evaluations will be pleasant—but understand that you can learn from the negative reviews and ultimately have a better event in the future. “Facing and learning from criticism is hard—the first response to criticism of anyone who is trying to do a good job is usually defensive,” he writes. “But when we confront unpleasant truths, plan to better understand them, and follow through, we lay the ground for making our event and our contributions to it better.” Check the post  (opens in a new tab) for more advice. (ht @TahiraCreates  (opens in a new tab))

Yah-Whoops?

Yahoo’s new logo and the 30-day punchline http://t.co/o9Z1YuaN3l  (opens in a new tab) by @aurich  (opens in a new tab)

— Ars Technica (@arstechnica) September 5, 2013  (opens in a new tab)

OK, OK, we know: We recently praised Marissa Mayer’s leadership skills as Yahoo’s CEO. But even a good leader isn’t perfect and needs to know the right moment to take a step back, something that may have been proven in Yahoo’s endeavor to find a new logo. The company’s branding is downright fundamental—Mayer says the brand is worth $10 billion  (opens in a new tab)—but the process Yahoo took to find its logo was a bit haphazard, Ars Technica’s Aurich Lawson writes  (opens in a new tab). (He’s not alone.  (opens in a new tab)) In her own blog post announcing the new logo, Mayer admits to taking a direct role in its design, noting her crack Adobe Illustrator skills and the fact that the design team spent only a weekend on the project (rather than taking a top-down rebranding approach). Lawson says that’s telling. “What gets me is the gleeful way Team CEO/Intern spent a weekend on this project and then called it done,” Lawson writes. “The message my designer side cringes at is ‘anyone can do this, so why waste more than a weekend of fun on it?’” Should Mayer have taken the logo project more seriously? This is a $10 billion brand, after all. (ht @arstechnica  (opens in a new tab))