Managing Expectations / Assigning Technical Levels to Events

Microsoft's Standard Level Definition

Your time is valuable, we respect that. Our time is valuable too, and to better manage expectations at events we are proposing to implement Microsoft's Standard Level Definition. We have taken your feedback into consideration in deciding to do this and we think it is a great way to manage expectations at events.

We don't want to put on events where no one signs up since they are rather basic or too technical. As a result we have compiled a survey that will help us get feedback for determining the technical level of future events. We hope that it will help us maintain a consistent level of attendance for the different technical levels.

Please fill out the following survey.

The Microsoft Standard Level Definition is as follows:

Level 100 Description:

Introductory and overview material. Assumes little or no expertise with topic and covers topic concepts, functions, features, and benefits.

Level 200 Description:

Intermediate material. Assumes 100-level knowledge and provides specific details about the topic.

Level 300 Description:

Advanced material. Assumes 200-level knowledge, in-depth understanding of features in a real-world environment, and strong coding skills. Provides a detailed technical overview of a subset of product/technology features, covering architecture, performance, migration, deployment, and development.

Level 400 Description:

Expert material. Assumes a deep level of technical knowledge and experience and a detailed, thorough understanding of topic. Provides expert-to-expert interaction and coverage of specialized topics.

We want your feedback

We organize these events for the developer community in Fredericton. We also take your feedback seriously.

This post as an example and we stopped making people fill out the evals at the end of meetings based on the feedback received through those forms.
Now, since we shot ourselves in the foot, we have no way of knowing what you thought about the events.

We just ask that if a speaker puts up a page on SpeakerRate, that you fill it out. (Matt, Gaetan, Atley)

If you liked or didn't like the event,

• Tweet about it
• Facebook it
• Blog it
• email us at info[at]frederictonug.net.
• Leave a comment on our site.

[Just include us in the tweets and facebook posts. Presently we don't use any social media monitoring systems, but if someone were to donate the use of one or send us a report once and a while...we would appreciate it :), Although overkill, still cool.]

Thanks a bunch for your time,

Your event co-organizers:

Andrew, Gaetan, Jason, and Matt