Speakerscore was the official evaluation partner at event Tech Circus 2013 – a new conference format, where event technology startups and event organizers spent a day discussing, developing ideas and listening to great talks.

See who made it to the TOP 3 list >>

It’s mainly done to reduce confusion - this is what things are called now:

Events are called Talks now – after all, the basis of the service is to help you evaluate one or more single talks. We found that people were confused about what they could actually add.

Awards are called Badges now – people called them badegs – and we saw that we had actually begun to call the special awards badges ourselves, so we took the consequence of that and changed the official name

Connections are now called Followers – since all a connection could do was look at scores, we thought that the name followers was more precise

We’re constantly adding new stuff. This time we did a rather substantial redesign of the speaker system, making it much easier to add one or several speakers to one event and even rate them individually or collectively (like before).

Another great thing we started is the analytics part. It still has a long way to go before it’s perfect, but we have started with the basics. Take a look at the headlines below or log in, to see what your analytics (or new badge design) looks like.

Many of you found it non-intuitive to add more speakers to an event. We took this all the way and totally redesigned the speaker part, with it’s own box and with the possibility to rate speakers on the same event collectively OR individually.

Want to work with feedback outside Speakerscore? Export your scores and include them in reports etc.

Basic analytics

Get overview over what, when and from with platform your audience voted with our basic analytics section, added on each event’s scoreboard. We are constantly thinking of new and even more interesting ways to enrich your data – but it’s really going to be your input that guides the further development of the analytics part.

Sharper badge counter layout

Several users told us that the number of badges was simply not as easy to read as the rest of the scores, so we have redesigned it from the top version (on the image left) to the new version in the bottom.

We’d really love to hear from you. What types of new tools would you like as a public speaker or organizer? What is unclear about the current stuff?

Catch us here: team@speakerscore.com

During Social Media Week Copenhagen (SMWCPH), we ran the official competition to find the Best Speaker of the week . The winner of the race was Gus Murray from the agency LBi with a Speakerscore of 91!  Get slides!

Speakerscore CEO Anders Colding-Jorgensen, applaudes Gus, after handing over the price device – a brand new Nokia Lumia 920

Gus and LBi won the competition with their breakfast talk about the Return on Social Media and together with Mads Erhardt from Social Media Week Copenhagen, we visited LBi to hand over a price and pay our respect. The price device was a brand new Nokia Lumia 920 from our competition sponsor, Nokia.

Gus shared the credit with the Social Media team and the people who helped him prepare. We really like that approach, because giving a killer talk is not only about talent, but about preparation and hard work. Finding the most interesting cases, designing the most intuitive models and rehearsing the talk before you deliver it, often pays of. As it did for Gus and LBi.

View the SPEAKERSCORE TOP 7 of Social Media Week here >>

By: Anders Colding-Jørgensen, CEO & founder

If I suggested to a group of athletes that they used a new measuring method, every time they performed, most of them would probably think I was an idiot – and perhaps say something like:  ”if we don’t use exactly the same measuring method every time, how can we know anything about our improvement?” (and if I suggested that they could measure their performance by the amount of applause they got, their response would probably be even less understanding.)

But what happens when I talk  to public speakers is quite different. Almost everybody finds feedback from the audience, about their performance, really interesting and useful. But surprisingly, most of us don’t ask our audience for feedback after a talk. In reality, most public speakers do not see themselves as performers who should systematically evaluate how they perform. If they did – they would perhaps start measuring audience feedback, much more tightly. To find out what really worked – and which areas to improve.

So why don’t we just evaluate our talks systematically?

I can see two reasons: First of all, there hasn’t been a standardized measuring unit for speakers – like the kilometer, second or minute for the athletes. This means that the measuring tools had to be invented every time a public talk was evaluated. This made it very hard to compare performance over time and has actually left audience feedback as a fairly random experience. We like to have it – but we can’t really use it systematically.

The second reason is that audience feedback has traditionally been performed by the organizers of the talk. And that has it good historical reasons. Originally, the organizers were the people who had the contact to the audience and could collect the paper evaluation forms after a talk.

Now there is a standard for evaluating public speaking

The internet has changed the way a lot of things work – and it is also changing audience feedback. It’s now easy for organizers and speakers to get feedback from the audience via smartphones, tablets or computers. And it’s easy for speakers and organizers to share the feedback, discuss it and use it to improve. And over the last year, we have worked with public speakers, coaches and academic evaluation experts, to design a systematic measuring tool for public speakers. A standard score system, you can compare and use to improve. We call it The Speakerscore.

Speakerscore is for public speakers, what the stop watch for athletes

What do you think would happen to your peformance, if you ran a (free) Speakerscore on all of your talks in 2013? Do you think it would improve or stay the same? The Speakerscore is a standard tool for collecting and comparing audience feedback. It’s easy to use at the end of your talk or via email – and you can share the score with co-workers, organizers or speakers.

Speakercore can help you on your next talk – it’s free! Read more about it here >>

Your audience very often has expectations

They came for a reason. And a big part a successful talk, is giving people what they came for – and a bit more. That’s why it’s so important to manage and meet your audience’s expectations. And to measure how you’re doing.

Consider this example:

Your audience has taken time off from work to listen to your talk, because they want useful tips and tricks on how to use their power tools better – but in stead you give them an extremely well researched talk about the history of tools, from tools of the stone age and to modern power tools. What do you think people will feel? A lot of them will feel well entertained, but still not satisfied. And who can blame them? After all, they came because of a promise, that was not delivered upon.

Managing expectations has two key components

1) Before the talk: Designing your “contract” with the audience

The announcement of the talk – online or on print – is your contract with the audience. It’s what tells what they can expect from participating. If you over sell your talk or your speaker, you won’t be able to deliver and people will not be satisfied. Under selling your talk or speaker is not any better, because this means that you will probably not be able to attract the key audience for your talk.

As a rule of thumb, your pre-talk announcement should tell people:

1. What the purpose of the talk is
2. Who the talk is relevant to
3. And who the speaker/lecturer is

This is our Manifesto! 

We, The Speakerscore People, believe that:

1. All public speakers deserve to get meaningful feedback from their audience
2. Most of the feedback and evalution tools, we use today, are not creating value
3. Getting feedback after a talk, should be an educational and stimulating experience
4. It should never involve digging numbers out of an email, a pdf or a spreadsheet!
5. You should be able to compare and share your feedback data with the world!