Feedback Season
Ever since I’ve been a part of the London Leathermen committee, the ending of each London Leather Weekend is a bittersweet one for me. On the sweet side, it is nice to see you all having fun, to be in the rush of things, and to see how these events, like seeds planted in March, turn into blooming, buzzing flowerbeds after months of tending labour. The bitter side? Exhaustion, mostly, which, combined with a looming winter outside sometimes does your boy in a little bit.
I usually deal with the drop afterwards by introducing practicality into the equation, because the ending of each London Leather Weekend also marks the beginning of Feedback season for the Events desk. In regular years, October gives us some gap between LLW feedback and the last quarter of the year. This year, since we are a month after our regular date, it is truly “a season”.
And so, as you see me take a stand on the steps of the Welly at Gear Social and ask you to take 15 minutes to fill a long feedback form – the only Leather Weekend speech I agree to give, mind you! – I imagine you groaning in your heads. “Ugh, him again and his feedback forms. I came to the event, he saw I had fun, I told him how I felt – why does he insist?”.
I agree with you that filling feedback forms is not often fun – but, the truth is, if you feel that London Leather Weekend and our Events in general have improved steadily over the last two and a half years, you can thank yourselves for filling out those forms!
(Of course, if you feel our events are in constant decline… Maybe you’ve got an interest in filling that feedback form even more)
Anyway – about those improvements…
Taking action on your feedback
Here are some prime examples of how your processed feedback improved our events:
In the 2022 LLW Feedback form, you told us that there was not enough diversity of events – too many socials that felt samey over the three days – and so, 2023’s LLW had a much more diverse program. You also told us you had a hard time identifying us in the events, which is one of the reasons why we now have red lanyards!
In 2023, you told us that year’s evening plans – collaborations with many events around London that hosted the club – did not work for the weekend and were not fit for purpose for the night owls. As a result, this year we collaborated closely with one event each night, and made sure our mark was made on the event itself. Newbies told us we should consider an introduction of some sort, and this year we had a very good start with our Ambassador program, which paired newbies with seasoned members.
As you can see, positive, neutral, and negative feedback all help us in the Events desk to do better. The negative tells us what is urgent, what needs fixing, what we might have missed. The neutral often gives us a new perspective to look at things that to us are too familiar to see from a different angle. The positive tells us what we did right, and what you want more of.
A moment about that; I think, naturally, people who want to give negative feedback will be more likely to speak up, as they feel something needs to be fixed – understandable. Positive feedback is actually rarer, as people often feel like if there’s nothing that needs addressing then there’s no point in giving feedback. That isn’t quite so! As an example, if 5 people thought Event X was incredible but didn’t write feedback for it, and one person thought it was abhorrent and communicated that – when we process feedback, we will only see a single negative review, and might decide to axe it next year. Sounds like a real shame, right?
Another thing the feedback provides us with is an approval that you agree with the paths we are taking, in the Events desk and as a committee. The positive feedback for the Leather Care Benefit confirmed our feeling that giving back should be a main activity that the club does. One comment that absolutely made my LLW this year was about how we are improving with accessibility considerations, and in making our events more friendly towards disabled members. We are not quite there yet, there’s still a road to go, but it’s encouraging to know that people see and feel our work!
We need to hear from you
I can go on and on about all the things we’ve learned from what you wrote – even the more outlandish things people wrote in these forms over the years – but I think you get the picture. Thinking of all these notes, here’s another number for you; last year, only 29 people filled the London Leather Weekend Feedback form. That is a great number, but, it’s not even a third of our membership.
All of this is to say that, we really want to hear from you, in our current LLW feedback form, in one of our upcoming events in January (more details about that coming very soon), and in February in our year end events survey. The more voices we hear – even if they just say they like what we’re doing – the closer we get to the fuller picture of what we can provide you. Your points of view, your opinions, and your ideas matter to us, and help us make the club fit around its membership like good quality leather short-shorts. Wouldn’t you like LLM’s backside to look delicious?
I thought so.
So, go ahead…
You know what to do.
Events #Feedback #LLW2024 #londonLeatherWeekend
London Leathermen
Smallboy34
Dice 🏳️🌈🏴🎲
London Leathermen