The purpose of the BP19 Session Selection Survey is to give the organiser an indication of what potential conference attendees find most valuable and relevant.

In the last week I tried several form builders, but none of them offered all the features I was looking for.  COGnito Forms seemed to be best compromise, and it also allows designing the best looking forms.  Displayed the questions in a randomized order would have been useful to minimize the effect of sequence bias. The best solution I came up with was creating two versions of the survey.  ‘Survey A’ presents similar subjects next to each other, while ‘Survey B’ presents the proposals in a randomized sequence (randomized at the time of compiling the survey — each respondent will see the questions in the same sequence).

The surveys consist of four sections: (1) Workshops, (2) Sessions, (3) Talks, and (4) Preferences.  You’ll see a short explanation before each section.

Completing the survey may take up to half an hour, since you’ll need to read and understand each proposal’s title and short abstract to provide a meaninful opinion if you’d like to see that included in the programme or not.  You can save your progress wherever you are and resume later.

Speakers’ names are deliberatly missing. The idea is to filter out any bias you may have for or against certain speakers.  Based on survey results, the most popular workshops/sessions/talks will most probably make it to the programme, while the least popular ones will not be considered for the second round.  The second round of voting will thus include only the middle ground; workshops/sessions/talks that have been selected by a sufficiently large number of people or may be interesting only for a part of the potential conference audience.

Survey results will be taken into account, but the organiser will consider several other factors as well.

Thank you in advance for spending time on completing the survey.

Please make sure you complete it by Saturday night, 17 November 2018.

In an attempt to motivate people to complete the lengthy BP19 Session Selection Survey, one lucky winner will win a ticket to BP19.   Here are the terms and conditions in more detail.

To be eligible for the prize draw, you need to provide a rating on at least 75% of the proposals and provide your email address on the last page of the survey. You’ll also need to complete the second round of the survey (probably at the end of November) to be eligible for the prize draw.

A link to the second round of the survey will only be sent to people who completed the first round by 17 November 2018.

Technically you can submit the survey several times, but only the latest one will be taken into account, hence you cannot increase your chances by submitting the survey more than once.

A winner will be drawn only if at least 100 entries are submitted.  The prize is a free ticket to BP19, including a workshop on 1 May, but excluding any dinners.  The prize is not transferable and has no cash equivalent.  The winner will receive a coupon code that can be redeemed only with the email address provided at the end of the survey. The coupon code allows the winner to get a 100% discount on the conference ticket, and should be redeemed by 31 March 2019.

If the number of eligible entries reach 200, a runner-up prize will also be awarded: a 50% discount off the conference ticket (with a workshop but without dinners). For each additional eligible 100 entries one runner-up prize of a 25% discount will be awarded, with similar terms as described above.  (For example, if there are 320 eligible entries by the end of the second round, one person will win a 100% discount, one person will win a 50% discount, and one person will win a 25% discount.)

If any of the prizes are won by a person who would attend BP19 for free anyway (i.e. any of the speakers), that prize will be drawn again once all speakers are confirmed.

The coupon codes must be used by 31 March 2019. If any of the winners cannot attend BP19 for any reason, the free ticket or the discount can also be redeemed for BP20, but not for any subsequent BP Translation Conference. In such case the winner must indicate by email by 31 March 2019 that she/he would like to transfer the prize for BP20. After this date no such request can be accommodated and the prize will be lost.

For the purposes of the prize draw, all eligible emails will be entered into a draw on RandomPicker.com, a web service that allows transparent and authenticated random draws.  Winners will be picked on Monday, 10 December 2018, and will be notified by email.