Proposal: Speaker feedback tool

In the past, the only ways we have gathered feedback from WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. attendees about a speaker session was to use a survey/poll or collect feedback at the event via paper forms.

There are a few problems with these approaches:

  1. Surveys are sent out after the event and therefore don’t usually have good response rates.
  2. The more time that has passed since an attendee has seen a session, the less detail they might remember, which makes the feedback less precise.
  3. The default survey does not collect very much detail about session content and presentation delivery.
  4. Feedback shared in hard copy isn’t easy to share with speakers (so they can grow their skills) or track (so the organizers can compare year to year).

This is a proposal that we build a special speaker-feedback tool to collect attendee feedback that solves those problems.

Goals of the tool:

  • Collect feedback for individual sessions during the event.
  • Provide easy access to feedback to the WordCamp organizers and speakers.

Where could it live?

  • The feedback tool could be accessed at an easy-to-remember URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL, like <>
  • The schedule page could have a ‘Feedback’ button on each displayed session.

Possible requirements worth some discussion:

  1. Because anonymous feedback is more likely to include abuse, should the feedback tool require users to be logged in?
  2. Should there be an automated way to report abuse to the Community Team?
  3. Would it be helpful for organizers to be able to edit the text-based feedback, so as to remove abuse, slang terms, confusing content, and/or to correct spellings before sharing with speakers?
  4. Should there be a way for the feedback to be made public, and if so, should it show up anywhere other than in the comments on each individual Session?
  5. Should there be a way to export the feedback, and should feedback be included in a requested privacy export?

Feedback Formats

Feedback could be given in a few different ways – either on their own or as a combination:


  • Pros: Simple, standardized way of showing how an attendee felt about a talk. Encourages positive feedback.
  • Cons: Could come at the expense if useful critical feedback.


  • Pros: Can be provided quickly. Usually allows for more accurate sentiment toward speaker sessions.
  • Cons: Can be easily skewed either way. Lower ratings without proper feedback are not very useful.

Free text

  • Pros: Would encourage attendees to be more thoughtful. Should provide more actionable feedback for speakers.
  • Cons: Some attendees will not be willing to provide more lengthy feedback, or they may take a longer time to submit it.


Here are some very early speculative mockups thanks to @karmatosed

Version One

Version Two

Possible Future Additions

  • Feedback content could be added as “testimonials” for sessions
  • Add feedback to sessions
  • Recommend other talks to attend (or watch on after giving feedback

Questions and Feedback

  1. What formats of feedback should we provide (emojis, ratings, text, etc.)?
  2. Do we encourage only positive feedback?
  3. Should responders be logged into in order to leave feedback?

#proposal #tools