Observe your event
Observation is a simple tool but it will provide you with valuable information. A good observation can tell you the good and the bad about your event. It will help you to see from the audience’s point of view, as well as your own. The use of an Observation Sheet helps to formalise the process of observing your event by focusing your notes, and organising them into a structure that others can understand.
guidelines
Take notes during the event so that nothing is overlooked. Afterwards, these will help you remember every detail of the event. What you look out for will vary slightly according to each event’s aims. However, some key factors will remain constant. These can be found below:
- Can all of the audience see and hear all participants clearly? If not, what is getting in their way?
- Length of discussion
- How much does the chair have to intervene – why do they have to intervene i.e. to keep the discussion going or to control the debate
- Quality of discussion – does the debate move forward or do people simply repeat the same things over and over again
- No of questions – are they from the same people or a variety of people
- No of people participating – is anyone left out of the debate
- Are people taking sides – are there distinct camps developing
- Level of emotional engagement
- Degree of interest from rest of audience who are not speaking themselves
- % of people who stay to the end
- % of people who stay beyond the end
- How do people appear at the end of the event
As soon as is possible after the event has finished, start to go through your notes against the event’s aims. It quickly becomes clear what has worked and what was not so successful. This can be written up formally so that it can be easily understood by other people as an Evaluation Report.