Just wanted to pick up on one of the innovations at the #Tru London 3 recruitment unconference. Bill Boorman - the event organiser - has written a great post on why he likes the unconference model and how he intends to develop it for his events.
In the post he mentions a site created for the Tru London 3 by job search engine Allthetopbananas which featured all the tracks for the event plus the ability for attendees to comment on tracks . . .
Thanks to sponsors Allthetopbananas we were able to develop a mobile website where attendees could follow the schedule and post 300 word reviews of the session. 55 of the attendees posted over 240 reviews, over a third of the attendees sharing their learning points via linked updates to the twitter stream.
As you can see from the number of comments, this was a great success. And unlike a Twitter backchannel it felt more substantial and more aggregated ie all the track comments could be found in one place. Not only did the site give users the chance to see if they should be in another track (based on live feedback) . . . for example . . .
Discussion is around do companies need to bother with career sites? The funnel of talent acquisition is the real topic. But convesation just is not happening, this I will pop off and see what others are chatting about
. . . it also provided Bill with an opportunity to see what was and was not working.
This, he told me at the event, enabled him to tweak some of the tracks as he went along. Now that is real-time listening to your customers and acting on what they are saying. Does that ever happen at other conferences?
Moreover, the comments were not just made for the sake of it either (which can happen more on Twitter) - they were useful and added to the conversation around the event.
This backchannel was incentivised, which was a great idea to get attendees giving feedback and adding value to the event. And it is public for all to see - during and after the event.