Making useful post-quiz notes
Making useful post-quiz notes
“Hints, tips and ideas on using notes after the event to help give yourself confidence and look at what went right and how you could seek to improve”
Welcome back to the blog and I do hope you are having a good Friday and that your working week is nearly done….I do also appreciate some of you reading this may be about to launch into a weekend full of entertainment so good luck! Today, I am going to revert back to an older topic I discussed when we first launched the blog here last year and its relating to something you can do post-quiz to improve yourself. We discussed in previous posts, and will do again, the idea of making good notes, getting feedback and analyzing your work in the aftermath of a quiz and in this post the very thing we are going to be looking at is a key part of this post quiz routine…making notes.
Now this is not going to be something that everyone agrees with, I understand this. But even now after 10 years and hundreds and thousands of quizzes I still make notes each time. They are key too my learning curve and key to what makes me good at what I do….that may sound a tad arrogant but I firmly believe it.
Firstly I must explain what it is I actually do so that a lot of what I am about to say makes sense….having just written half the blog in advance I realize this is the best way…..Anyway, what I do for every quiz I run is print out the sheet of questions and make little notes on. Questions people got wrong? Were any unanswered? Etc
Making useful post-quiz notes – Understanding the night
- The worst thing you can do is host a quiz, pack away your stuff and move onto the next venue. You need to have a think about how things went…..Make ongoing notes during the quiz if you have to. In any profession it’s the only way to go and you need to keep on top of things.
- It is also good to make notes as it reminds you what questions you did, what music you used etc and it all helps keep you right.
- It helps the flow of the quiz as well as if through doing your notes you suddenly realize that players were scoring 3/10 on the music round, you know that the time has come to either make it easier and adapt it, or change the whole theme altogether.
As we have mentioned before on here, getting feedback from customers is always great and you should use the feedback and compare it your notes.
- Are your notes giving you the same idea that the feedback cards are?
- Does your notes reflect what the players are saying? Add into your files and notes what players are saying and it all helps you plan the next week. Obviously, things like this matter less when the gig is the same every week with the same core of players but still its always worth doing.
- Underline questions people loved, cross ones people sighed at….it all makes you a better trivia host and if you have any professional pride this is what you want to achieve.
- Other ideas for notes – if it’s a venue you only use once in a while make notes about the power sockets, do you need cables, the layout, ideas on improving, names of the bar staff so you can be friendly when you next go in and a date in your diary of when to recontact for more business.
- If you have a bad experience somewhere and don’t want to be booked again, make a note why and you can tell others.
- Especially if you are trying out new rounds and such like…make a note on was it too long? Did people enjoy it? What were the scores like?
- If you host 5-6 nights a week of trivia you are going to struggle to remember everything that happened and especially if you only run a certain format once in a while you are going to need notes to help. Even the best trivia host cant remember the in’s and out’s of every quiz!
- If you are hiring other people to run some sort of multi event quiz or people are using your quiz on other sites, the notes could be used to aid them too as you have tried and tested it!
So there we have it…..now it is time to put down the tablet, switch off the laptop and get yourself a good old fashioned notebook and pen and start to look at those precious quizzes. If you are still reading this shaking your head thinking I don’t know what I am talking about or that this will never work….just trust me. Give it a shot!
It has been one of the busiest weeks of the year on the blog and we would like to thank you for reading and for your continued support, hints, comments and ideas. Quizzing is such a good community and trivia hosts tend to be people willing to share ideas so if you have other tips on this or indeed any other of the posts we make, let us know. Until next time happy trivia hosting….
Update: I have been asked to upload another example quiz by a few people who are still getting used to using the format I uploaded and tying in balanced questions. I do not mind doing this at all and I have no problems sharing my ideas with you and even my full questions. But for the sake of continuity on the blog my plan is to upload an example quiz this week another one next week and then no further ones in full formats. Obviously if I am talking about individual rounds Ill use examples but I don’t want the blog to just become quiz after quiz. Hope you understand! Always happy to help.
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