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Closing the loop on meeting evaluation Author: Boyers, Karla ProQuest document link Links: Check GetIt! for availability Full text: Headnote Once you get feedback, make sure you use it. Which came first, the meeting or the evaluation? If you think that's such an easy question, you may need to think twice. Participants at a recent ASAE focus group-facilitated by Joan Eisenstodt, president of Eisenstodt Associates, Washington, D.C.-unveiled some important considerations with regard to the who and what and when and how of gauging meeting success. Among the kernels of consensus: that feedback should not only be sought but also used in a continuous loop of product improvement, with one event's evaluation data factoring into the planning and content of the next event. More often than not for many associations, the group fears, evaluation data don't make it past the filing cabinet, much less actually get put to good use providing feedback and direction to those involved in the very aspects of the meeting for which you've requested judgment. Participants also agree that the kind of feedback requested, how you request it, and what you can expect to find out varies according to the type and size of your meeting. For instance, one focus group participant says his association does a threemonth follow-up and a six-month wrap-up with individuals who attend one of the association's smaller meetings to see how attendees are applying what they learned back on the job. "We use that information to develop future programs, but it's much easier to do this with 35-50 people than it is with 5,000," says Kevin Morales, director of administration, American Association of Nurserymen, Washington, D.C. For discussion purposes for this article, participants were asked to focus on their associations' major annual event. What follows is a compilation of observations made by focus group participants that might prove helpful in implementing or revising your own association's annual meeting and convention evaluation procedures. Stakeholders: Who-and what-drives decision making Part of the difficulty of evaluating annual meeting success may stem from unclear-or nonexistent-meeting objectives, according to focus group participants. Does your association have specific written objectives for attendees, exhibitors, and speakers, for instance? If so, do staff members and other key players know what these are and how they are supposed to help achieve those objectives? Another potential obstacle is a fuzzy perspective on who are your meeting stakeholders-defined by the group as any audience considered to have a vested interest in the event. Members and attendees, exhibitors, speakers, and association staff quickly come to mind. But included in that mix could be external stakeholders such as the hotels and convention centers-and the cities-where you meet. An association's budget could even be considered a stakeholder, agree focus group participants. "I think it's important to sit down and actually write out who your stakeholders are so that staff are reading off the same sheet of music and realizing what is involved in the meeting," says Julia Kurdt, director of member affairs, National Beer Wholesalers Association, Alexandria, Virginia, and president of the JBK Group. Because different people within the organization may naturally emphasize different stakeholders, you have to be aware of how that can break up the overall meeting focus, says Kurdt. As important as coming together to identify stakeholders is agreeing who is the primary stakeholder and how you are going to prioritize expectations accordingly in your decision making, says Bob Dziuban, CAE, executive director, Optical Laboratories Association, Fairfax, Virginia. "You can't measure objectives unless you have them, and you can't measure anything until you begin to identify the expectations [of your primary stakeholder]:

what the primary stakeholder is looking for in return for the investment," says Dziuban. The process of successfully identifying and working to fill the expectations of your primary stakeholder should result in meeting the needs and expectations of all your other stakeholders as well, explains Dziuban. "I've seen too many occasions where the primary stakeholder was identified as the budget," says Dziuban. "The meeting was an overwhelming financial success, but the members were thoroughly dissatisfied with the educational aspect, and it therefore lost support.' Meeting measurements: Beyond the obvious Any number of factors can influence meeting performance. Location might affect attendance. Changes made to the content and format of your association's meeting as a result of industry changes may shift the demographic makeup of your attendees. But by what measurements do most association meeting planners judge the success of their annual meetings? By what measurements should they judge the success of these meetings? In addition to the number of registered attendees, associations typically look at factors such as the number of exhibitors and/or the amount of floor space sold, exhibitor traffic, sponsorship dollars, hotel room blocks filled, publication/product sales, and new member recruits to tell if they are on target with the previous year's meeting or with anticipated outcomes. What about tabulating the amount of trade press or media coverage you receive as a way to gauge success? Has it occurred to you to measure your educational reach-that is, how attendees are actually using the information they received from your meeting? According to focus group participants, these are some of the measurements that too often are ignored, or just plain missed, but which potentially offer insight into determining a meeting's success. David Berenhaus, convention coordinator, National Science Teachers Association, Arlington, Virginia, goes so far as to suggest asking, "Has the convention served as a vehicle to make a positive difference in the world, our communities, and our homes?" Evaluation: Who, what, when, and how Who. The evaluation process itself requires fine-tuning to determine what you want to know. From whom do you want feedback? Attendees, exhibitors, speakers, planning committees, volunteer leaders, staff members, and service providers-all your meeting stakeholders-comprise the universe of potential respondents. If you can pinpoint your core group of meeting participants, members of that group can probably tell you why they keep coming back, agree focus group participants. In the same vein, non-attendees might be able to fill you in on why they don't show up. Robert Lucas, assistant executive director, National School Boards Association, Alexandria, Virginia, says his organization sent a simple fax to those who had attended the previous year's event but who did not register for the current conference saying, "We noticed that you weren't there," and then asking a series of questions to determine why. Thinking ahead to future members doesn't hurt, either, according to Eisenstodt. If associations are concerned about keeping pace with membership growth and participation, they will need to contend with groups like the allegedly nonjoiner Generation X, she says. "Associations can get very static," says Eisenstodt, who also believes the number of mergers in recent years within the association community may signal that organizations are no longer meeting the needs of their stakeholders or keeping pace with changing demographics. What. The question of what meeting planners have the opportlniy to evaluate carries an equally stan(larr set of options: speakers, educational and general sessions, exhibits, social events, and meeting location, for example. But a number of ancillary questions abound. For instance, "Should we seek quantitative or qualitative responsesor both?" "Should we evaluate the meeting overall, or ask feedback about specific aspects and functions of the event?" For Alison Owings, director of meetings and conventions, American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, Washington, D.C., evaluations are as much geared toward finding out future needs as they are for confirming expected performance of the most recent event. "We ask a lot about what they want next," says Owings. When. Although every association works on its own time line, when you solicit feedback may be as important as whom and what you ask. On-site evaluation elicits immediate feedback on

any number of questions-from room setup to speaker performance to relevance of material-while the experience is still fresh for meeting participants. But how much energy does your association put forth in gathering comments from its stakeholders either before or after your meeting? All focus group participants say they in some way gather input from members and/or committees to prepare meeting content. In fact, at his previous association, Dziuban says, nothing was on the program that wasn't touched by a member. Logistics were staff-driven, but members had entire responsibility for the content. Based on the desires of his association's leadership to refocus an upcoming convention's program content, Berenhaus and his committee reorganized meeting space assignments and categorized sessions differently in their promotions. According to Eisenstodt, meeting performance needs to be measured even after a meeting. "It's not a welooked-at-it, we-planned-it, we-did-it, and we're-done mentality. It has to be continuous." Dziuban conctrs. He believes you can learn a lot by going to those who attended your event the previous year. "You can say to them, `You were there. What should be on next year's program?' In a way, how many people you get [to respond] is a measure of the success of your previous meeting," says Dziuban. How. Finally, how you measure your meeting performance involves much more than logistics-whether to include evaluation surveys in registration kits or to put them on the chairs in meeting rooms, for instance. It also involves the mechanisms by which you conduct your research. For example, do you conduct on-site surveys, hold focus groups, or informally poll attendees? Do you monitor sessions to see how well-attended they are or how much interaction is taking place? Do you conduct a traffic audit to determine the success of your trade show? By what mechanism are staff members asked to give input? How you seek to measure meeting performance can likewise be broken down by the tools you use to assist you in the process. For instance, is your association incorporating keypad, reader card, or online computer technologies in its data-gathering processes to find out more about attendees and their opinions, needs, and preferences? Focus group participants agree that available technologies aren't being fully exploited by many, if not most, associations. Several admitted they continue to use paper-and-pencil forms-still a common evaluation method for most associations. Building more sophisticated database systems to track information such as repeat and first-time attendance and member purchasing patterns likewise isn't being fully explored, say focus group participants. Although the American Association of Nurserymen is currently reviewing such demographics to plan future programs, they are in the minority. While focus group participants cite cost as a factor that keeps new technologies at bay, Eisenstodt is hopeful that change will comesooner than later. "Certainly as an evaluation method, [technology] has to make all of our lives easier at some point, once it's refined and we learn how to use it," says Eisenstodt. Feedback: Closing the loop The looming question, according to Eisenstodt, is, "How are you using evaluation data to make substantive and/or necessary changes to your annual meeting content and process?" Are you sharing feedback with the appropriate constituencies? Are you not only collecting but also compiling demographic information on your attendees and members so that you can better assess and fit their future needs with a better-or new-meeting product? Berenhaus adds another important question: "Who conducts and compiles the evaluation data-staff, volunteer leaders, or service providers-and who is responsible for disseminating the results?" Issues of validity and timeliness are the impetus for this question, explains Berenhaus. Morales can relate to the timeliness factor. His association currently uses evaluations that are specific to each session, but it had been using a more generic evaluation. "We review these with a member program committee to get insights for next year's program." Results should tie into the next cycle," confirms Eisenstodt. The crux of the matter is, "How do you take this

information and not only assemble it but use it to develop objectives and content for your next meeting-and then carry those through?" It may be as simple as going back to the beginning, says Dziuban. "Instead of making assumptions when putting the meeting together, and then measuring how successfil you were, go directly to the people you've identified as your primary stakeholders and find out from them what they want. Then involve them in the process so that you are ensured that your event is successful. If you follow this course of action, you've built success into the meeting before it occurs." AuthorAffiliation Kta Boyers is associate editor of AsTION MANAGEMENT. Publication date: Sep 1996

Bibliography Citation style: MLA 7th Edition

Boyers, Karla. "Closing the Loop on Meeting Evaluation." Association Management 48.9 (1996): 71. ProQuest. Web. 12 Aug. 2015.

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