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s a data analyst , what
A challenges do you face with digital event data ? DR : We expected digital events would give us tremendous insights into event performance , since the digital platform captures every attendee interaction . What we found was that the standard reporting from most platforms often provided an extremely misleading picture of participation , even relative to traditional reporting from physical events . Most people come and stay at physical events , so simply capturing the number of attendees at the event and at individual sessions or other engagements provides a pretty good measure of participation . At digital events , work and home are only a mouse click away and many people leave after minimal engagement , so it is imperative to also know how many see most of the event and how many stayed for only a few minutes . Most digital event reports provide only attendance counts and average dwell time . We found that attendees could be credited whole days of attendance because they left a window open . When averaged with people who only viewed a few minutes , this inflated both attendance and average participation . When we restricted individual view times to the length of content and looked at the distribution of participation , we found something very different and more revealing .
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However , getting to that often meant dealing with inconsistent data structures and rules for recording participation and resulted in hours of needless work to clean data . We worked with RSDE to establish standards for platforms to share the data from an event so that it would be easier to see what really happened .
How do the standards determine a session ’ s start and end time ; number of people who logged in ; number of people who saw content ? DR : RSDE establishes rules for what counts as viewing a session . The rules require that session viewing only counts when the session is available and is limited to the length of the session . If video on demand was available after the live event and the same user logged in for VOD , that time counts , up to the maximum time for the session .
We ’ ve defined a standard of three minutes for session attendance to screen out people who didn ’ t see a meaningful portion of the session or event .
How many data tables are included in the RSDE standard ? DR : There are 12 required tables capturing various types of event data .
In addition , platform interactions include participant registration data , exhibitor , and sponsor information , data about sessions , session duration , or what content it includes .
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Below : David Richardson |
How can organisers learn more about RSDE ? DR : We created a User ’ s Guide , RFP template , and data ownership Terms and Conditions . Organisers can specify how they want their event documented according to RSDE and specify the additional information they most need .
Organisers should require certification that platforms ’ reporting complies with RSDE . Using certified platforms , organisers know data can be trusted and what it means . EW
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