Divya's Speaker Feedback

After each alumni event, the committee notes in ten seconds how well each speaker held the room, so the next invite list writes itself.

Who this is for

Divya Rangarajan runs the alumni office of an engineering college in Coimbatore. She is one full-time person with four volunteers from the 2014 batch. On a Saturday evening, after the annual meet ends and 180 alumni are still crowding the tea counter, she has about ten seconds between handshakes to record what she just watched happen in that hall.

How the job is done today

Right now it lives in Divya's head and dies there. She tells the volunteers group on WhatsApp, "Ravi sir was good, keep him," and someone replies with a thumbs up, and eleven months later nobody can find that message. There is a spreadsheet called Speakers_Final_v3 that has names and phone numbers but no note about whether anyone listened. Twice she has re-invited a speaker who emptied half the hall, because the only person who remembered was a volunteer who has since moved to Pune.

The screens, in order

1. Tonight's speakers — Shows only the speakers from the event happening now, so Divya does not have to search for anything.
2. Rate this speaker — Takes one tap on a scale of how much of the room stayed with the speaker, and nothing else is compulsory.
3. Speaker history — Shows one speaker's past ratings side by side so the committee can see whether the room warms to them every time or only did once.
4. Who to invite next — Lists past speakers sorted by how the room received them, ready for when the next event is being planned.

What it keeps track of

• Speakers — name, batch year, what they do now, phone number, any note
• Events — event name, date, roughly how many people came
• Ratings — which speaker, which event, how the room responded, who rated it, one optional line of why

The one decision that matters

The choice is whether the rating is a number out of five or three plain buttons. A five-point scale feels precise but costs thinking time, and Divya is standing in a hall with people waiting to talk to her. Three buttons that say the room stayed, the room drifted, or the room emptied cost no thinking at all, because she already knows which one she saw. Go with the three buttons. A rating that gets entered every time is worth more than a finer rating that gets skipped, and eleven months later nobody wants to know whether Ravi sir was a 3.6 or a 4.1, only whether to call him again.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out collecting feedback from the alumni themselves. Forms and QR codes at the door mean chasing people, low response, and someone to clean up the results. The committee saw the same hall the alumni sat in, and four honest observers who were present are enough to answer the only question that matters. If the ratings start getting used, alumni feedback can come later.

How you would know it worked

In the meeting where next year's event is planned, someone opens the site instead of scrolling WhatsApp, and a speaker gets dropped from the invite list because two volunteers marked that the room emptied.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run the alumni office of a college in Coimbatore and I want a small website only my four volunteers and I will use, where I can keep a list of past speakers with their name, batch year, what they do now and phone number, and a list of our events with dates. On the evening of an event I want to open it on my phone and see just that event's speakers, and for each one tap one of three buttons saying the room stayed, the room drifted or the room emptied, with an optional one line note, and that should be the whole job in a few seconds. Later I want to open a speaker and see how the room responded every time they came, and one page listing all past speakers sorted by how well they were received so we can decide who to invite next year.