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| 2000 Conference: Going the Distance |
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| 2000 Conference: Going the Distance |
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1=poor |
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Total
number of attendees = 461 |
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| NUMBER RESPONDING | AVERAGE RESPONSE | |
| Overall Conference | 106 | 4.42 |
| Overall Speakers | 104 | 4.14 |
| Overall Topics | 107 | 4.12 |
| Location | 106 | 4.45 |
| A/V Tech Equipment/Sound | 106 | 4.05 |
| Vendors | 99 | 3.77 |
| Food | 107 | 4.41 |
| Give-aways: Gym Bag | 108 | 4.14 |
| Give-aways: Book | 103 | 4.16 |
| Program Materials | 103 | 3.83 |
| Conference Website | 100 | 4.25 |
| Conference Staff | 105 | 4.65 |
| How many past CALI Conferences have you attended? | 99 | Average = 2.8 |
| Do you plan to attend next year in Boston? | 108 | YES=102 NO=6 (94.4%) |
| Would you recommend this conference to others? | 108 | YES=108 (100%) |
| Second City & Marcello's Dinner | 30 | 4.40 |
| Awards Dinner at the Hyatt | 43 | 4.72 |
COMMENTARY
This was the largest conference in terms of number of attendees and sessions. The attendees continue to come from three, broad groups - IT staff, faculty and librarians. The IT Staff are the largest group, but not by much and this might be because it is difficult to tell if someone is working in IT from within inside a library. The distinction isn't that important, but the variety of titles from IT staff is interesting.
I don't have any hard data, but I think these are the best evaluations we have ever received for a conference. Especially striking is the 100% number for the question "Would you recommend this conference to others?". Several of the "Do you plan to attend next year..." who said "No" also indicated reasons that were unrelated to the quality of the conference.
The evaluations for individual sessions and speakers was quite high, overall, as well. In deference to the speakers, we will not be posting these numbers, but they will be emailed to the speakers directly. The goal is to provide feedback so that future presentations get better.
There is always room for improvement. We hope to incorporate more discussion-oriented sessions next year. One idea is to turn Saturday over to a "day of discussion" and not have any presentation oriented sessions. Between 1/3 and 1/2 of the attendees disappear on Saturday and it always seems unfair to schedule speakers on that day.
Geekfest was generally well-received. We plan to bring that back - perhaps give it a "little" more structure, though many of you commented positively on the more free-form approach.
The biggest complaint was that there were too many good sessions at the same time. I try not to schedule good sessions against each other, but I often have no choice. The speakers provide me with so many good sessions, that there is no way to please everyone. We hope that the availability of the sessions on the website after the conference mitigates this problem.
John Mayer
7/26/2000