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Surveying SIETARians about Berlin
Giving you the kind
of annual congress you want
During the month of April, the SIETAR Europa office conducted a survey
evaluation of the recent Berlin Congress. For a survey of this sort, we
received an extraordinary response—about a third of all the congress
attendees responded with feedback and ideas for our future meetings.
Survey results
In the survey here were many, many suggestions about the marketing
of the congress, registration processes, travel and lodging to pay
attention to in our choice and preparation of the venue. The Congress
Committee for the coming year’s meeting in La Colle sur Loup will be
taking these very seriously.
Key suggestions about the program itself included:
Learnings and implications from the survey process
There are two major learnings from this survey process itself. Firstly,
SIETAR Congress attendees are deeply interested in and committed to
the quality and experience of our annual meetings. They are willing to
speak clearly and creatively when the opportunity is given. Many
expressed interest in becoming actively involved in the preparation of
next year’s Congress.
Secondly, the success of this survey tells us that we can effectively use
this online process to sound out the opinions and desires of our
membership. It suggests to us that this resource can play an important
role in the transformation of the General Assembly into an active year-
round advisory and decision making body. This would be most desirable
since only a fraction of the membership can be present at the actual
meetings during the congress and few, if any attend Board meetings,
though they are open to all. In addition, the new structure of SIETAR
Europa as a representative body of all the European SIETARs as well as
its direct membership enlarges its concerns for the intercultural
profession in Europe as a whole and demands that we put new
consultative processes in place.
Three next steps
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Regarding the congress itself, we will be doing a follow up survey
with all the members of SIETAR Europa to further define and
refine the theme and planning steps for the 2005 Congress. The
first survey was sent only to those people who actually
participated in the Congress in Berlin. The second survey will be
addressed to the entire membership.
- Another survey will be conducted
in the second half or 2004
about the intercultural profession. We want to look at who makes
up our profession, what they do, whom they serve, how they
market or deliver their services, what their levels and standards
of professionalism should be, etc. This survey will be distributed
to SIETAR members as well as to non-SIETAR intercultural
professionals worldwide. Several of us have committed ourselves
to having preliminary data on this survey to present at the
SIETAR USA Conference in November.
- We will be exploring with the Board
of Directors of SIETAR Europa
the use of the survey tools for quick consultation of the
membership on critical issues. This is likely to take the form of
very short and focused questions and requests for your opinions
on current issues that require information for decision making on
the part of the SIETAR Europa Board of Directors and the General
Assembly.
Acknowledgement and thanks
Once again we would like to thank the SIETAR Deutschland and SIETAR
Europa members who worked so hard to produce this year’s Berlin
Congress and to the participants for their frank and useful feedback
during and after the event.
Survey Monkey is the
software that we have subscribed to and are
using for our elections and surveys. If any local SIETAR would like to use
this software, please contact the SIETAR Europa Office.
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