“Collabtastic!”
This is the first bit of feedback that jumped out at me as I began to review the 113 Festival evaluation survey responses as 2010 came to a close.
As the new year begins, I have absorbed the evaluations and want to share some of our findings, including some key metrics for last fall’s Learning, Freedom and the Web Festival.
We’ll start with the quantitative bits for those who love numbers and end with a selection of written feedback for those who love words.
Drumbeat Festival 2010 by the numbers
- 430 participants
- 40 countries represented
- 30+ participating organizations
- 13 stories published in the traditional press
- Too many blog posts, tweets, pics, and videos to properly count
- 40 volunteers
- Over 240 hours of volunteer work on site
- 6 people on the core staff
- 113 evaluations submitted, a 26% response rate*
- On a 1-5 scale (disappointing-to-awesome), the Festival earned an average score of 4.28. We can safely say the the Festival was at least 85.62% awesome!
- Less than 12 respondents rated the Festival 3 or below.
- People who thought it was too structured – 12%; too unstructured- 30%; just right – 58%.
- Insert “Something, something, something? Priceless” joke here.**
Festival feedback in words
Here are some excerpts from questions we asked on the evaluation survey. I chose them because they either reflect a general consensus among multiple respondents or offer a singularly unique contribution to our thinking on Mozilla’s investment in learning or great advice for future Festivals.
If you could say one thing about this event, what would it be?
- “I learned more and left with more ideas and connections than at any
other conference/festival.” - “Drumbeat is inspiring in a practical way. Not airy-fairy theories and ideas but real things you can do to affect change.”
There was also a funny pattern I just have to point out:
- “ADHD (in a good way!)”
- TWISTED! I mean that as a compliment.
- “…overwhelming in a good way…”
- “It made my brain hurt (in a good way!)”
What were the top 3 ‘Aha’ or great learning moments for you?
- “Emergent collaboration (adhoc hackathons) -Meeting someone in a restaurant who teaches math, leading him back to a hacker dungeon and seeing him help a designer understand vectors (protractors were used!)”
- Honorable mentions for favorite technologies: “Subtitling videos can be SO much fun! (with right tools!)” “HTML is MUUUUUCH more important and world-changing than I had thought.” “Arduino – I can do that at my local college”
- Honorable mentions for keynotes: Cathy Davidson & Aza Raskin
- “I am not alone.” This was a common sentiment, along with ideas of “community” and “connection.”
What 3 things would you change about how learning (content, skills, socialization, accreditation) works in 2020?
- “Less textbook knowledge, more hands-on/real world pedagogy.”
- “More emphasis on peer learning.”
- “Information would be free and open and teachers would be valued for making sense out of that information.”
That’s just a quick overview. Please use the comments section below to raise your own ideas or ask questions.
I’ll be back with one more look back at Drumbeat Festival 2010, focusing on the organizing process and logistics (to a small extent) with the intent of recording my advice for moving us from 86% to at least 90% awesome in 2011.
* This is a huge response rate and why we did paper evaluations, rather than a web-based survey, for those who were wondering.
** Please forgive the US-centric attempt at humor.
As I have been evaluating the process and outcomes of producing the Festival, I spent some time studying one of the 
