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Symposium '08 Feedback

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On October 1-2, we held our fourth annual Partnership Symposium at FORUM Solutions. We had 130+ attendees in town for the event and at least another 25 or so virtually via the Internet. The symposium originated as the TAPS Lending user group meeting. With our sale of TAPS Lending earlier this year we weren’t sure what to expect as far as attendance. We knew we had some momentum in building a relevant event, yet we also know how time starved everyone is and how many conference event options are available. We experimented with a slightly different format (thanks Ron Shevlin for the suggestion and delivering on the concept), streaming live over the Internet (thanks Brent Dixon for your help with this) and held over some components that worked last year. The team here at FORUM Solutions hopes those of you that devoted your time and energy found it to be a worthy pursuit. We don’t know if there will be a ‘09 symposium. We are working on an idea for next year so stay tuned for details and please contact us if you have suggestions. In the spirit of transparency here are the survey results and some links related to symposium content:

  • We asked: Did this event meet or exceed your expectations? – 22 people responded (I wish we had more) and 21 (95.5%) said it did and one said it did not.
  • Some comments were:
  • Day one seemed a little light
  • 1st time to attend – I found it very informative
  • Extremely well organized; timely/relevant topics from smart, interesting and compelling presenters
  • Exceeded
  • Went well – Like to see bigger attendance / wider audience
  • Exceeded – one of the best conferences I attended this year
  • Lots of awesome ideas and incredible take-backs.
  • Too many sessions were boring – is this a technology, social media or marketing conference? I think you have an identity crisis and need to decide
  • We asked: Did you like the event format (amount of time for sessions, # of days)? 100% of respondents said yes to this question.
  • Official breaks between sessions would be good
  • More question and answer time
  • The format was perfect. The time allowed for speakers, breaks, and lunch was good.
  • The event could have included more round-table BarCamp style discussion – which may have added 1/2 to 1 day
  • I liked the presenters’ energy.
  • Need break between every session
  • Worked great – 1 1/2 – 2 days is perfect
  • Need more time for the idea sharing session
  • Some of the speakers seemed rushed to fit the presentation into the 30 minute spot
  • Good duration – some sessions could be longer
  • Just enough to get great input without being too much – networking opportunities were incredible
  • We asked: Did you like the topics presented? 91% said they liked most of them and 9% said they liked a few of them
  • Comments (tell us which topics were your favorites or which ones you didn’t like as much)
  • Skeptic, Azaroff
  • Best were Tim McAlpine, Matt Davis, Jeff Stephens, William Azaroff
  • Favorites: building online community, Young & Free
  • I resonated with the marketing/brand-related topics – it could use more forward thinking real life examples / cases of remarkable innovative initiatives in action
  • Vancity, Young & Free, Cantaloupe were great
  • Tim McAlpine, William Azaroff, Robbie Wright
  • Cantaloupe
  • Loved having an update on Young and Free, Andy Janning is great, Matt Dean presents a great vision
  • Favorites: Young and Free, Brand Positioning with Stephens, Engaging Social Economy with Azaroff
  • A lot of repeating topics
  • Matt Davis, NPS, Morriss Partee
  • Shevlin was a great moderator, NetPromoter, Jeff Stephens
  • Vancity was awesome – impressed with Matt Davis’ presentation – very inspired by Tim McAlpine
  • Liked Young & Free, Brand Positioning (Stephens), Online Community (Partee), NPS
  • We asked: What did you enjoy most at the symposium?
  • Host question and answer structure is great
  • The bacon, mmm peppery
  • The variety of topics – quality of the presenters
  • I enjoyed the presenters that used video, not just PowerPoint
  • Openness, sense of community, freedom to laugh
  • Networking with influential industry leaders/writers/speakers; hearing from the true subject matter experts
  • Interactive nature of presenters with their real lives and relating them to their materials
  • Venue and attendees
  • Seeing all of the CU bloggers in one place
  • Meeting so many energetic CU folks
  • Dinner the first night – great social opportunities
  • Cutting edge – tech minded conference
  • Connecting with like minded folks – presentations were not too commercially oriented
  • The CU Skeptic session sparked some great discussion
  • Symposium was able to get me back to thinking about CU and away from everyday tasks – I am motivated
  • Quality and breadth of topics and speakers – also liked the format of the presentations/interview – excellent
  • Interaction with people – interview style was great
  • Ron did a great job as moderator – he asks tough questions and gets the best out of presenters
  • Seeing all my old friends
  • If I could only attend on conference a year – this would be it
  • Brainstorming with fellow CU employees and advocates
  • Idea exchange
  • We asked: Do you have any suggestions for how this event could be improved?
  • I’ll probably come back – thanks
  • More time for idea exchange (each day)
  • The down time between speakers was annoying – why did every speaker have their own laptop to hook up – very unprofessional and shows lack of respect to the audience
  • Create an online forum/social network for pre/post symposium question and answer
  • Encourage more networking and/or round table discussion
  • Have a pre-conference cocktail party the night before for all attendees to meet in advance
  • Promote more – don’t think everyone was aware
  • Do it every year and keep it up
  • More people
  • Longer idea exchange session to talk about ideas and what the speakers are teaching us
  • More interaction with each other; not just lecture
  • Keep the mix of content diverse – not too much social media / marketing – introduction to new products
  • More round table type discussion such as Wednesday afternoon
  • Focus on social media
Some popular coverage of the ‘08 symposium: