One of the greatest things that has arisen in the past 10 years or so is a veritable stream of great conferences for people to learn how to write better software, many of them low cost or even free. In the Data Platform community, we have had nearly 800 free SQL Saturday events around the world in that time. Add to this far more local meetups, and then many other small, medium and large conferences, and it isn’t unlikely that there have been nearly 10000 sessions presented just on the topic of the SQL Server product alone.

One thing that these events share, is that the speakers are human beings who want to do a great job. Sometimes, they do, sometimes they don’t. As a reader of this blog, I expect that you have probably been to at least one event during the past year (and if you haven’t, much of what I am going to say pertains to blog comments…hint, hint!). As you sat down to hear someone teach you about a topic, you were usually handed a sheet of paper that was titled: “Session Evaluation”, with at least one row of boxes to check how you felt the session went.

As a frequent speaker, and a bit of a sensitive person, one of my absolute least favorite things in the world is receiving this feedback. This may sound like I generally get bad feedback, but that is not the problem (I am usually a bit over average). The problem is that even when I get 90% perfect scores, there are going to be a few bits of feedback that makes me mad. For example, something like the following:

What did I do wrong that this person felt the need to give me a below average score? What can I improve so that the next group of people I present to will get something better? Was it for something that was in our out of my control, or can I fix it? So many questions!

While the lack of a written comment makes the ranking of 2 hurtful and not helpful, sometimes the comments indicate something that range from confusion as to how I, as a speaker can fix it, or rage that a person could be so shallow or offensive. Examples taken from aggregates of real feedback I have seen, both to me and to other people:

• Room was too hot
• Room was too cold
• Screen was too small
• Chair was uncomfortable
• I don’t like the speaker’s choice of shirt
• Was in the wrong session. Didn’t learn what I expected.
• Too basic – I already knew this stuff
• Something super offensive
• So much information, I would need to go back and read the materials again to understand the topic in detail

For some conferences, the scores are used for future speaking possibilities, which I may now lose because “the room was not comfortable?” The last one was kind of the most interesting feedback I have received ever… I never considered that the attendee would be able to comprehend a subject so well in 60 minutes that they wouldn’t need to do any further reading on the topic. And I am guilty as charged with providing extra information in the downloads of my session.

My challenge to you today is to realize that most speakers care about your comments and take them to heart. Do your best to make your feedback actionable, not just insults. And give as much feedback as you can, it will almost certainly be appreciated by the speaker. Sometimes a session just doesn’t work one day, and the feedback will help make that clear. Sometimes, I find that I don’t love a lot of sessions that other people do love, so maybe the session just didn’t suit your fancy for some reason.

Constructive negative feedback such as the following, is very much appreciated, and has helped make me better over the years:

• Didn’t leave time for questions between topics. Was feeling lost.
• Please don’t move the laser pointer around like we are cats. Keep it still and pointed at the thing you are highlighting.
• Relax, the audience is your friend
• Cover the real-life applications of the topic first
• Way too much to try to cover in 1 hour

The primary thing to understand is that speakers love to hear what they could do better from the people who attended the session. If that feedback is not above average, then make it clear why you felt that way. If everyone filled out the session evaluations with at least two sentences of feedback, the quality of presentations would skyrocket in no time.

Of course, while negative, constructive feedback is most helpful, getting positive feedback is essential too. If 100 people are in a room, and 10 people return evaluations, 2 of them negative, as a speaker, this makes me feel like there were 20 people in the room that didn’t like the session. Maybe more. So (and I am preaching to myself here too,) fill in those session evaluations! Seeing 4’s and 5’s makes one happy, but seeing actual words saying, “Thanks for teaching me something!” is priceless. Just knowing that someone loved it enough to scribble a nice remark makes the hours of preparation, expenses of travel, and time not spent in another session learning something yourself, worth it.