Well I did say the test of transparency would be whether I rushed to put up a poor evaluation of a presentation. I did a roadshow for CPA Australia in July (24th and 25th) in Sydney and Melbourne to the topic of ‘Optimising your financial reporting systems for long-term value’. The feedback that was received was not as good as I would have liked but if you’re going to give presentations you’re not going to find it possible to do really well all the time.
I did spend at least a day putting together the presentation and trying to convert COBIT-type thinking to a more practical consideration. Probably predictably the feedback was mixed.
At any rate I am posting the feedback. It’s always a good thing to be transparent and honest, I am sure. Just ask governments. Firstly the average overall rating was 3.9 (where 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = average, 4 = very good and 5 = excellent). So I suppose if we rounded it’s still a ‘Very Good’ assessment. Technical content received an average of 4.27 and presentation skills 3.96. CPA’s look for 4.2 so I guess that’s not as good as it could have been. I’m hoping the audience were hard markers.
Comments specific to my presentation included:
- Great. Nice to see some personality, relevance and interaction with us.
- Presentation too long – had to rush through part of it
- Great presenter but subject matter much too vague
- Good speaker, covered the topic well, shame we ran out of time
- Gave some practical things/going to ask myself
- Great – very knowledgeable
- Too much consulting waffle
- Great – Entertaining
The only unambiguously negative comment of course is the ‘too much consulting waffle’ comment. Personally I thought I had added just the right amount of consulting waffle but perhaps some people don’t like as much waffle as others do. :).
Overall the ratings are a ‘Very Good’ and it’s of course silly to go off the deep end over that. Still I would have liked to do better on that score.
Ah well, ‘Must try harder’.