Questionnaire Results

The enclosed document contains a summary of the responses to the Automotive EMC 2003 Conference questionnaire.

All questions answered on the scale of 1 to 5 as given below;

1 – Very Poor (significantly poorer than expected)

2 – Poor (below expectation)

3 – Good (met expectation)

4 – Very Good (exceeded expectation)

5 – Excellent (significantly better than expected)

The results presented to 1 decimal place are the mean data from all returned questionnaires (31), the results quoted to a single digit are the modal response for the papers and presentations.  The “Best” paper result is given in top 3 order (3^rd, 2^nd and 1^st places) as voted by the delegates of the conference.  Not all responses had complete information.

Comments

There were relatively few comments on the questionnaires, so we have decided to include them all. Text in quotes are comments taken directly from the delegate questionnaire responses, all other comments are from the conference orgainser; Martin O’Hara.

Venue:

"Service for refreshments would be better and could help to speed up."

"Very good starting point."

"Gents toilet bins overflowing at 9:00am."

"Not easy to access."

The comment about access is difficult to understand if you are a car driver (less than 1km from M1, J14), but those using public transport did have difficulty.  Unfortunately public transport in the UK is generally very poor outside of major cities.  Lets hope it is better for next year’s event at Newbury racecourse.

The refreshments were a bit slow to obtain, but having a served provision would have added 20% to the delegate cost.  The initial drive for the conference was for minimal cost to delegates, hence something usually has to give under tight budget control and service provision was one of those things.

The comment on the state of the toilet (and other waste bins) has been passed on to the hotel.

Conference Organisation:

"Well planned out."

"Very well organised."

"Good conference, well organised, good mix of talks."

Thank you for the kind comments.  We know there were a few minor problems with the booking information (some items could have been more clearly expressed).  The main problem with organisation we identified was some delegates not reading the delegate pack (several didn't know they had been sent this PDF file).

Papers and Presentations

To some extent using the modal result is a little unfair to the speakers as there were very few responses less than 3 for all the papers and presentations, hence the mean values were all higher than the modal result.  The best paper was a closely fought contest with almost all papers receiving at least one vote, indicating that the delegate interest was dispersed throughout the topics on offer.  The top 3 places were separated by only 3 votes with Peter Hartnett of Transparent Engineering taking the prize of the 1931 antique copy of “Automobile Electricity”.

Overall

Interested in attending Automotive EMC 2004:      Unspecified=14              YES=15            NO=2   

"Automatic slide switch must be avoided."

"Excellent."

"Fewer presentations would be better. No more than 12."

"Excellent conference, good value for money."

"Happy to start at 9:00am for earlier finish. Overall kept to good time."

"Poor name labels."

"Real world phenomena and problems or case examples is always needed."

“I expected more demo's and/or things to see and do in the exhibition hall.”

“Very worthwhile day for someone like myself who is new to the automotive environment.”

The comments about early finish and fewer papers will both be taken on board for Automotive EMC 2004.  The conference next year will most likely start at the same time, but with 12 papers should finish at 4:30pm.

The name badges were poor and a different scheme will be used at any future Automotive EMC conferences.

The automatic slide advance is wholly my fault; I had failed to notice the timing set in the PowerPoint template provided to speakers.  I had gone through the whole slide programme prior to the conference, but not in real time, hence failed to spot this problem.  I wish to offer my apologies to those speakers affected by this automated slide advance.

The exhibition hall was not well attended in my view, although the exhibitors have not complained.  It was put on at a relatively late stage and was deliberately made basic to minimize cost and facilities provision (none of the exhibitors were guaranteed to be able to have access to a power source for example).  The exhibition was typical of a “table-top” exhibition and not the more up-market exhibitions of an event like Nepcon, York EMC or next years EMC UK 2004.  I feel the exhibitors put in a lot of effort considering the size of the venue and space allocated and was personally very impressed with how well this small exhibition was supported.

Summary

Overall I am very pleased with the responses received to the conference, many comments on the day iterated the same sentiments as expressed above.  The overall impression I found was that the conference was well planned and kept to good time and consisted of a series of high quality papers.  Obviously not all papers will appeal to all attendees, but I felt that everyone gained something from the day, including the speakers and myself as organiser.  I’d like to thank the speakers publicly for their efforts that, in my opinion, made the conference the success it was.

Martin O’Hara

10^th November 2003

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