In the days following our fifth Ignite Waterloo event on February 8 we asked for feedback from our Ignite Waterloo community, initially via a couple of Twitter tweets and then via an email sent to all people who have previously signed up for an Ignite Waterloo event. The response rate was amazing, and we received a great deal of thoughtful and insightful input from people. It’s gratifying to see just how much people have come to care about Ignite Waterloo events, and how willing you are to share both kudos and criticisms.

So what have we learned from you?

We confirmed the obvious, that people attend to hear the talks, and to meet and converse with friends old and new about interesting topics old and new. Here are a few comments to help give the flavour of what you told us:

• “I come for the talks. I want to see people doing interesting things and sharing interesting ideas and telling great stories.”
• “Its everything. Its entertaining, interesting, amusing, provides great perspective about our community dynamics. Its great networking and one of the best things about it is that it is very inclusive for all age groups – the cross section of attendees is amazing. I have loved every event I have attended.”
• “I love hearing about the variety of things people are passionate about. I’ve learned about a lot of different things going on in and around Waterloo because of the people who present at Ignite.”
• “I like the idea of having a large variety of talks on different subjects all in one place. There’s plenty of events that have great speakers on a particular topic, but it’s quite a bit more rare to have an event which gathers together many different disciplines in one place at one time.”
• “The talks, the cool venue, something different to do, and the friendly, busy atmosphere. Also, I like that I don’t choose the topics so I’m not self-filtering for what interests me; I’ll learn something I didn’t know before.”

You also told us what you think we can do to make Ignite Waterloo events even better. While there were a great variety of suggestions on how to do that, there are a few main themes that emerged.

1. You want the talks to be less obviously “pitchy” than some that you saw at the fifth event.
2. You want a space that isn’t too crowded and that supports the kind of socializing and conversations that make Ignite Waterloo events such a valuable experience for you.
3. You want us to ensure that there are seats for everyone who attends.

We’re already working on ways to address these issues for our next event. You’ll see more about our progress in the coming weeks and months. In fact, as we move forward we’ll be coming back to our community with some specific requests for help with making Ignite Waterloo better.

Thanks to everyone who responded to our request for feedback, and thanks to everyone for your continued support of Ignite Waterloo.