“But the Russian Judge Gave Just a 5.2.” 

[The second part of a two-part series regarding Speaker Evaluations.]

This blog post discusses the integrity of anonymous speaker evaluations.
I spoke recently at the ALA Greater Chicago Chapter’s Educational Conference and Expo on “The Hottest Trends in Websites and Digital Marketing.”  We discussed LinkedIn for Lawyers, SEO, Responsive Design, etc.  There were ~40 attendees, one of whom was a web-development competitor of mine.

25 attendees took the time to turn in evaluations.  About half hand-wrote brief but thoughtful responses to “List specific highlights.”

Every single evaluation was great. 
For example:



Every single one.














Except one, that is.


One terrible unsigned evaluation.  Secretly.  From my “anonymous” competitor:

😉

In the Olympics and other international competitions with a panel of judges, they throw out the high and low scores to reduce the chance of secret bias.  History has shown that judges sometimes vote politically, unfairly, unethically, or use considerations having nothing to do with the actual performance. 

Many of us remember how unfairly the communist countries seemed to score the US Olympic gymnasts and divers during The Cold War:

“5.9.  5.9.  5.8.  And oh, the Russian judge scored her a 5.2!  Too bad!” 

That sneaky negative evaluation? 
I know why he did it.  But it’s still not nice. 


CEO, Fishman Marketing, Inc. 
+1 847.432.3546
ross@fishmanmarketing.com

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