The National Information Standards Organisation had invited attendees to provide their feedback to tell them what they really thought about the NISO Plus 2020 in a feedback survey. 89 of the 251 participants responded to the survey, a great response rate of 36%.
One of the goals was to bring the information community together and facilitate meaningful conversations between the different stakeholders — librarians, publishers, vendor organisations, and more. The attendees came from right across the community, and from a variety of different functions. The most common responses to the Other option in both cases were consultants and those whose organisations or roles straddled more than one area. Another question asked was if the conference succeeded in enabling those important conversations, and the answer was a resounding yes — a score of 4.25/5.
Another goal was to build on the success of the former NFAIS conference, and expand participation to include a broader swath of the information community. 61% of respondents were first-timers, who had never attended the NFAIS meeting; Almost two thirds (65%) were Net Promoters — ie, their likelihood of recommending the conference to colleagues was 9 or 10 out of 10.
The organisers also wanted to continue to meet the needs of those who had supported the NFAIS conference in the past, and 38% of survey respondents had attended at least one conference previously, although only 7% of respondents said that this was their main reason for attending NISO Plus. The vast majority of former NFAIS conference attendees were seen to be very supportive of the new conference, with nearly half identifying as Net Promoters. A small number were less satisfied — four out of the 34 former NFAIS attendees scored the conference 6 or less — however, the conference’s NPS across all survey respondents was 52, with anything above 50 considered excellent.
Drilling down into attendees’ views on the logistics and content of the conference, the satisfaction levels were almost universally high, especially in terms of the overall organisation of the conference (rated 4.42/5), the quality of the speakers (4.4/5), and the presentation plus conversation format (4.38/5).
Speakers are critical to the success of any conference. Upon checking with them about their experience and, again, the feedback was excellent, including a score of 4.81/5 for the relevance of their topic professionally, 4.77 for the responsiveness of NISO staff, and 4.73 for audience participation in their session. Gratifyingly — if perhaps not surprisingly, given their experience! — all speakers said they would like to participate in future NISO events, other than one who responded maybe.
As is so often the case, much of the most valuable feedback is in the form of respondents’ free text comments, and the organisers are still working their way through those. As well as pointing out some opportunities for improvement, including moving to a larger venue (already in hand — next year’s meeting will be at the Grand Hotel, Baltimore, which will give us the extra space we need), and suggestions for future topics and speakers, the good will toward NISO and the community that the conference generated was much appreciated.
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