Making events better for the product community
Earlier this month we ran an unconference for product people in the public sector, and we’d like to run more this year. There was a limited amount of planning that went into the day, and we often described it as an ‘MVP unconference’! But like all good product people, we want to iterate and improve what we do, so we asked the community for feedback.
Things we can improve
Approximately 75 people turned up on the day and we had 9 responses to our feedback survey, meaning these results only cover 12% of the community. Though we can’t draw any major conclusions, there are useful pointers to improvements we can make.
- A few people mentioned problems with noise between the different sessions, as it was one big, open space. We noticed this on the day and tried to encourage groups to use other areas, but we’ll book spaces or plan the day to improve audibility in future.
- It could have been clearer when the day ended, so that people could book trains home.
- Having guides on how to structure sessions would have helped people facilitating discussions, including how to create spaces for introverts.
Positive points
There was good feedback about the unconference format, which felt collaborative but relaxed, and it did well to help folks learn from each other. Respondents also said that there was the right number of sessions (and breaks!) too – it’s good to know we didn’t overload people.
On the whole, it was a valuable day with respondents rating it 8.1 out of 10 (on average). The overwhelming response was heartening, about how much everyone enjoyed getting together in person again, after the pandemic kept us apart.
What’s next?
We’re already planning the next unconference which will be taking place in June in Cardiff (instead of May, which we said previously). We’ll make sure we share more details in the cross-gov Slack, and on our twitter feeds (Steve, Jukesie, Debbie).
We’re really keen to involve the public sector organisations outside of central government, in local government, the NHS and beyond. So if there’s anywhere else we should be sharing, please, let us know. And we’ll look forward to seeing you there!
