Skip to content

Blog post

Community event 2018 – sharing learning

Find out what your feedback from the survey revealed and how we'll be using it to shape next year's event.

It’s been two months since the annual community event, the highlight of the Q calendar for many. This year the Q Exchange was a key feature of the day, which allowed members at the event to vote on the 15 projects they thought should receive funding for an improvement project.

The team and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the event planning, despite the many complexities involved in organising an event of this size!

As with all Q events, we asked for feedback on what you enjoyed and what could have been better for you. We really appreciate the time members give to share feedback so a big thank you to everyone that completed the survey.

We’ve now spent time reflecting on all your comments to help us think about what we might do differently next time. Here’s a summary of the feedback and some of our ideas to address this – please do comment below to share any other thoughts.

You said

You enjoyed the networking opportunities and catching up with contacts you have made at previous events.Some members would prefer more structured networking activities to meet people they could collaborate with or meet specific people they have communicated with online only.

Our response

It’s great that so many of you have made valuable connections through Q. To help you link up with people you’ve met virtually, we are considering sharing a delegate list on the Q website in advance, to help you meet up with specific people on the day of the event.  We are trialling this at some workshops in November/December to see if this is helpful.  We’ll think about how to support people to make connections at the next annual event – it’s never too early to start sending through ideas, so please do share!

You said

The lightning talks were really great and having a quick introduction into a topic was a format many of you enjoyed… but the rooms needed to be bigger so more people could benefit from attending.

Our response

We’re pleased that the lightning talks were so popular. We’ll be thinking about this kind of bite-size format for the next event and will ensure we consider the room sizes, given their popularity.

You said

Talking to the Q Exchange project teams and allowing them to bring their ideas to life was inspiring and helped you think about potential projects in your own area… however some people wanted more time to go around and talk to the project teams and others wanted less time to do this.

Our response

Q Exchange was a pilot this year and it has been so helpful to gather your feedback on the entire process. We’re analysing all the data gathered and will be considering all aspects of the Q Exchange, including voting mechanisms when starting to design the next round of the programme. We’ll also be involving Q members in this process early in 2019.

You said

The best bits about the breakout sessions were having practical take-away tips and engaging content. You also told us that you would have preferred to have slightly longer sessions to go into more detail about the topic and also have more clarity about the objectives of each session, to help you choose the right session to attend.

Our response

We’ll take forward these suggestions when planning the next event and welcome member input in designing the content of the sessions.

In the event survey, we asked you what the highlight of the day was. The responses are here, in WordCloud format and as you’ll see, the Q Exchange Projects and Liberating Structures were definitely well received!

I’d also like to thank the 30+ members who joined the group space to support aspects of the event design. The support given helped us in so many ways, from feeding back on the event objectives, choosing the lunch menu, supporting the content of the breakout sessions and critiquing the event programme… We couldn’t have done it without you! I’d like to give a special mention to Seema Srivastava who was not able to attend the event but still gave up so much of her time to be involved in helping shape many aspects of the day. That’s what I call commitment!

And thank you to the 90 people who told us they’d like to get involved in the design of next year’s event… You’ll be hearing from us before you know it.

I look forward to seeing you again soon and if you need your next Q fix – why not come along to one of our upcoming Liberating Structures workshops.

Look forward to seeing you at #QEvent2019!

Leave a comment

If you have a Q account please log in before posting your comment.

Read our comments policy before posting your comment.

This will not be publicly visible