Stupid Videos....

(subtitled - too much time on my hands....) 

Sometimes I can't help but laugh at some of the comments I get on evaluation forms from my events. Today's chuckle comes in the form of....

     "too much time spent on stupid video..."

Now and then I break up the monotonous drudgery of a 4 hour technical session with a humorous picture, joke, and yes, on occasion, a stupid video. I don't take any issue with the "stupid video" part of the comment. It is silly. But I do wish the address the "too much time spent" part of the comment.

The video in question is exactly 2:36 (2 minutes, 36 seconds). Add in the setup (30 seconds tops) and the wrap-up (30 seconds tops) and we have a grand total of 3:36 spent dealing with a stupid video. *IF* my sessions we 30 minutes long, I can see that taking up 11% of the session in a stupid video as a valid concern. But in a session that is 3.5 hours long (take 30 minutes out for breaks) we are only chewing up about 1% of the session with the stupid video. I am trying to think of what topic I could have gotten into regarding Vista that I could have meanigfully conveyed without prompting any further questions in 3:36. I think it was a valid use of time....

Now, I don't want to sound like I don't take customer feedback seriously. In fact I would really appreciate it if people who rate a session as a 5 out of 9 would spend 60 seconds in the comments section telling me "why" so I actually have a clue as to why they didn't like the session. But I can't help but think that some people just need to lighten up. 

Cheers!