[feature request/discussion] build in a slight "penalty" for no-shows who don't change their RSVP

[Katherine]

Hello,

Despite sending an email reminder to un-RSVP if the student can no longer attend the workshop (thus allowing another student to be confirmed in time for them to make plans to attend), I think 50% attendance is common.

I wonder if it would be desirable to build in a slight "penalty" to discourage this behavior, or at least acknowledge that this is undesirable behavior.

I was thinking that if a student who was confirmed *before* the last 48hrs doesn't un-RSVP at least 24hrs before the event start time, *two times in a row* (because, hey, stuff happens), the penalty would be triggered.

For the penalty, I was thinking that, when the student went to register for the next workshop, they would not be added to the list of students - instead of would be put directly onto the waitlist, keeping spots open for students who haven't triggered the penalty...until 1 week before the event - then if there is any remaining space, they would be automatically shifted into the listing of confirmed students.

I can imagine that you might not want to over complicate Bridgetroll, and so might decline this feature request.  [If okay, then I'll create the GitHub Issue.]

Your thoughts?

Katherine

p.s. Maybe this first-to-Google-Group-then-to-GitHub strategy isn't correct.  In the future, if you just want me to open the feature request directly as a GitHub Issue instead of messaging this Google Group, let me know.  It can be just as easily given the thumbs-up / thumbs-down over there.

[Steve Barnett]

(TL;DR of my opinion: the penalty thing feels icky to me, and I think we organisers just have to grit our teeth (a lot, sometimes!) and assume a certain number of no-shows.  :-/ )

I'm really interested to hear what everyone thinks. At RailsBridge Cape Town we struggle a lot with this too (although we're still using meetup, not BT).

We've discussed charging a small refundable-on-arrival fee for attendance. A pro of this approach is that, in theory, this would give "higher quality" RSVPs: people who RSVP Yes have a higher probability of actually turning up. A con of this is that you could get a much smaller number of RSVP Yeses because you're adding a barrier to entry: some people might not be able to pay the fee; they might not see that it gets refunded on arrival so choose not to come; the organising team now has to handle money; it feels against the open, welcoming, <3 ethos of RB. For us, the cons outweigh the pros so we've never implemented this change.

What we are doing is over-booking slightly. We're basing the amount we overbook on data from previous events. We started by assuming 100% attendance (optimists!), then adjusted a little each time. We always have some no shows, which I mark after the event (example) so I can keep track of the data. We also often have a few last minute RSVP Yes -> Nos, which we aren't tracking, but should: it can lead to no shows because Waitlist people get bumped, but have made other plans in the meanwhile and can't make it.

What meetup does to try and remind people is to send one email reminder a week before and one email reminder a day before. This seemed to be working for a while, but  the effectiveness seems to have tailed off. For other, non-RB, meetups, we've found that a personal mail (sent from an organiser, using meetup because we don't have everyone's email addresses) gets much more response than the automated meetup one. A simple "hey, there are people on the waitlist, can everyone please make sure their RSVP is correct" gets a flurry of updated RSVPs.

For RBCPT specifically, we've been doing a thing that hopefully is having a similar effect. A week before the workshop, we email students an exercise to do. The one we're using at the moment is What you know, and what’s your plan?, which is from Sharon Bowman's awesome Training From The Back Of The Room (We also do lots of activities on the day). The activity is designed to get them thinking about the workshop before they arrive (and form connections between what they already know and what they will learn), but also serves as a reminder of the workshop and the fact that it's A Thing that People Have Spent Time Organising.

Katherine (and everyone else!) what do you think of all that ^^^ ? :)

Regards,

Steve

[Katherine]

I'm happy to let this go.  I think we can just plan for 50% attendance for quarterly workshops.  I do the personal emails the week before, in addition to the automated Bridgetroll emails.

The one that really got me was the folks who request childcare & are no shows.  Not last-minute-I-can't-come, but really no-communication-no-shows.  Arranging & paying for babysitters unnecessarily adds up.  Since that time, we keep checking in the week before the workshop until the childcare requesters respond.

Separately, I really like your idea of an exercise sent via email the week before.  Once we get our main curriculum squared away, we can add things like that.

Regards,

Katherine

[Lillie Chilen]

Oh gosh, I thought I sent this reply-all on Oct 10th, but I just sent it to Katherine! O_o

I have a lot of idea about how Bridge Troll could help:

---

I've definitely been thinking about ways that Bridge Troll could discourage no shows, too. I think there are a lot of people who just sign up immediately without actually checking their calendars, and since it's free, don't worry about canceling their RSVP, regardless of the number of times we ask them to.

I think your proposed solution is a bit technically complex compared to other things we might do, but I'd love to make this thread a brainstorm of various features we could add that would discourage no-shows, and then we could turn some of those into stories on GitHub.

Some of the things I've considered:

• Sending no-shows an email letting them know we noticed that they weren't there
• Sending no-shows a survey asking why they couldn't come (forgot, last minute emergency, didn't feel like it, was actually there)
• Showing chronic no-shows a pop-up on RSVP that we've noticed that they don't usually come, so maybe they should check their calendar before RSVPing to this workshop
• Require chronic no-shows provide a phone number to RSVP so we can text / call them reminders to coming to the workshop via Twilio (or call them after the fact to find out why they couldn't come)
• Require chronic no-shows to confirm 2 days before the workshop that they are actually coming, cancel their RSVP if they don't confirm
• Requiring chronic no-shows to put down a deposit ($20?) that they will get back if they do show up to the workshop

One of the issues here is that there are lots of places that use Bridge Troll that don't have this problem, likely because they have workshops less frequently, or maybe because people in their regions are less nicer than SF :P So we might want these things to be opt-in, rather than default. 

I think one thing from your suggestion that we should keep in mind is that if someone is let in off the waitlist with less than 48 hours to go, they shouldn't be considered a no-show, since that's not a ton of time and they might have made other plans. (Another thing we could do is send a waitlist reminder email a week ahead of the workshop asking people to cancel their RSVPs if they wouldn't be able to attend.)

---

RE: Steve's comments — I think this is super important and that while yes, we can use non-programmatic ways to discourange no-shows, I don't think we should let whatever is icky feeling about making it more challenging to be a repeat no-show stop us from making Bridge Troll software that helps RailsBridge reach more students. I think it could have tremendous value for RailsBridge as an organization to be able to fill those spots left empty by no-shows. 

(FWIW, in SF, we already do plan for some number of no-shows, but it's extremely variable between workshops and makes it *very* hard to feel confident in ordering food / having enough volunteers. Perhaps this is more acceptable for places that do quarterly workshops, but I think we could do much better for everyone with some help from Bridge Troll.)

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Bridge Troll" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bridge-troll...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Lillie Chilen
@lilliealbert
('li-lee shuh-'leen)

[Rachel Ober]

I think it's also important to try and apply this to frequent volunteer no-shows. I think this is actually a problem we've had in NYC.

---
Rachel Ober
rache...@gmail.com
rachelober.com
twitter.com/rachelober

linkedin.com/in/rachelober

[Bayard Fetler]

About childcare: maybe people who request it need special attention, like an extra email or two to confirm when they are coming.  It's easy for people with kids to have a crisis or tantrum on their hands that disrupts their day - I've had similar issues meeting friends with kids for lunch.  Sometimes they're able to let you know, sometimes not.  Having a phone number to text may be helpful.  Do we usually designate a volunteer to coordinate childcare who could text parents the day of the event?  

It's great that Railsbridge is so supportive of parents.  Hopefully they feel welcome if they can only make it part of the day -  a possible reason for cancellation.  However, if it happens repeatedly, maybe someone could contact them to find out what happened.  

As for other no-shows: I like the idea of a survey for repeat no-shows.  We could also do a survey of people who attended, to find out what they liked or needs improvement.  It needn't be long - just a few questions, with different content to let people know we noticed if they were there or not.  It could also help encourage repeat volunteers.  

---

Bard Fetler

[Steve Barnett]

@Lillie: Ooh, I also like the idea of a survey asking why they couldn't come.

I dig it because it might help us find out what the cause of the no-show-ing is, which will let us figure out the best solution to it.

It might be an SMS the day before, it might be an "add to calendar" link in the confirmation mail, but it feels like we need more data to be more sure.

@Brad: how's your response rate for the survey been, and what format do you use?

We've been using a Google Form thingy for a while (http://rbcpt.org/exitsurvey), but we find completion rate varies quite wildly.

We also find that the kinds of things people say in the form are often very different from what they say in person.

So, we also do some kind of feedback thing during / near the end of the workshop: https://railsbridgecapetown.org/activities.html#goodbadchange.

Regards,

Steve

[Lillie Chilen]

Yeah, the no-show survey feels good to me, but I also am very curious about whether people who don't show up would actually fill out the survey :)

(Bridge Troll does already have a built-in survey that asks students and volunteers what was great, what could have been better, and general comments, so that functionality is already there & being used. In SF, we have separate volunteer & student retros at the end of most workshops, too.)

@steve — I'd love to know what it would take for your chapter to switch from Meetup to Bridge Troll — perhaps we could email about it on- or off-list :D

[Clara Raubertas]

++ on a survey for no-shows!

[Katherine]

>  I also am very curious about whether people who don't show up would actually fill out the survey :)

I think even if they didn't fill out the survey, receiving one would might change their behavior anyway...their no-show was noticed.