[Board] Preliminary Survey Results

Mark Lucas mlucas17 at mac.com
Fri Sep 23 07:32:36 PDT 2011 

I think it is a pretty safe bet that it will be very small percentage of North Americans that make it to Beijing - based solely on cost and distance.  I think those of us that are planning to go to Beijing will attend both conferences if we can.  Agree that around 500 is the reasonable break even target for North America.

Mark

On Sep 23, 2011, at 10:22 AM, Peter Batty wrote:

> I'm also not inclined to get too carried away with estimates for a possible event next year, but I do think that an estimate of 500 or so is pretty reasonable. There are concerns over potential dilution of the global event of course, but in my mind these concerns are relatively low when you look at the numbers on local (same continent) attendees for all our past events.
> 
> A good comparison is State of the Map - that had been in Europe every year until this year, where there is a larger user base. They chose Denver, and there was some concern about how attendance would be. An independent SotM-EU in Vienna was also organized, and there were concerns about that detracting from the Denver event. But Denver got 250 people, including a higher proportion from Europe than we had at FOSS4G, and Vienna got 200. Both events had higher attendance than the single event the previous year, I believe. Obviously there are no guarantees in any of this, but to me that's an encouraging sign that having events on different continent needn't have a negative impact on attendance.
> 
> Cheers,
>     Peter.
> 
> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 6:17 AM, Mark Lucas <mlucas17 at mac.com> wrote:
> Chris,
> 
> Good point, but I'd expect that we could rubber stamp the Denver conference and match or exceed this year's number.  Colorado is a geospatial center for the US.  I think the break even target for this year was somewhere around 500, so it would be prudent to target that or slightly higher.  As government budgets get whacked I'm expecting a lot more interest from government agencies.  In any case, it was a very successful conference and this years attendees will help spread the word.
> 
> Mark
> 
> On Sep 23, 2011, at 7:13 AM, christopher.schmidt at nokia.com wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Sep 22, 2011, at 10:37 PM, ext Mark Lucas wrote:
>> 
>>> Yep, and that is just returning attendees.  67% were new attendees for 2011.  So it would seem we could easily duplicate the 900 attendees at this years conference.
>> 
>> I don't think it works like that.
>> 
>> FOSS4G was in the US for the first time in a long time; the space itself has changed
>> drastically since 2004 (or even 2007) when it was last practical to attend
>> the conf. for a lot of people.
>> 
>> I think that the new market for attendees was huge this year, but I don't
>> think it's fair to extrapolate that it will *always* be that big;
>> I think that imagining the market/space will grow by as much between 
>> 2011->2012 as it did between 2007 and 2011 is a pretty big 
>> expectation.
>> 
>> I would start with mpg's numbers and go up slightly, unless you believe there
>> is somehow a very large untapped potential that Denver did not address; 
>> I think that imagining a 25% growth of new attendees is reasonable, but
>> expecting *two thirds* new attendees again would be excessive.
>> 
>> -- Chris
>> 
>>> Mark
>>> 
>>> On Sep 22, 2011, at 9:34 PM, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:
>>> 
>>>> For “likely to attend a FOSS4G in NorAmer next year” (#19), the responses were
>>>> 
>>>> 1: 10%
>>>> 2: 10%
>>>> 3: 25%
>>>> 4: 20%
>>>> 5: 35%
>>>> 
>>>> Let us assign probabilities to the 1-5 scale like this:
>>>> 
>>>> 1: 0% (will not attend)
>>>> 2: 20% chance of attending
>>>> 3: 40%
>>>> 4: 60%
>>>> 5: 80%
>>>> 
>>>> Assume 900 attendees at this conference.  Then, we can project the attendance at the postulated local NorAmer conference to be
>>>> 
>>>> .10(900) * 0 + .10(900) * .20 + .25(900) * .40 + .20(900) * .60 + .35(900) * .80
>>>> = 0 + 18 + 90 + 108 + 252
>>>> = 468
>>>> 
>>>> Check my math, but we could be looking at a ~500 person gig.
>>>> 
>>>> -mpg
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> From: board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Peter Batty
>>>> Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 6:02 PM
>>>> To: foss4g2011-private; board at lists.osgeo.org; conference
>>>> Subject: [Board] Fwd: Preliminary Survey Results
>>>> 
>>>> Hi all,
>>>> 
>>>> Thought I would share a few preliminary results from the post-FOSS4G survey. As James says below, we'll get the data in a better form for analysis once we close the survey. But we got responses from 1/3 of attendees within 24 hours, which is great!
>>>> 
>>>> A few things I'd highlight:
>>>> 
>>>> 67% of attendees were at their first FOSS4G
>>>> 46% answered 5 to the question how heavily do you currently use geospatial open source, remainder split fairly evenly between 1-4.
>>>> 61% were software developers as main job function, 18% end users, 20% managers
>>>> Overall rating of FOSS4G was 4.31 on a scale of 1-5, which is impressive!
>>>> Highest ranked function was the Wynkoop reception at 4.55.
>>>> Quality of presentations was ranked at 4.07.
>>>> 72% answered 1 or 2 on how likely they are to be in Beijing, 14% answered 4 or 5.
>>>> 57% answered 4 or 5 on attending a "local FOSS4G" if there was one in North America next year.
>>>> Of various possible options proposed for future FOSS4Gs, the one involving an annual local conference in North America was the highest rated by some margin (though obviously a sample skewed towards North Americans).
>>>> 
>>>> We need the more detailed spreadsheet to get scores and comments for individual workshops, I think that will be another important thing to look at in planning for next year.
>>>> 
>>>> Lots of interesting stuff in the comments too that we can use to make future events better.
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>    Peter.
>>>> 
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: James Sakamoto <jsakamoto at gita.org>
>>>> Date: Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 3:36 PM
>>>> Subject: Preliminary Survey Results
>>>> To: Peter Batty <peter at ebatty.com>
>>>> Cc: Bob Samborski <bsamborski at gita.org>, Libby Hanna <lhanna at gita.org>, Patricia Essex <pessex at gita.org>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Hi Pete,
>>>> 
>>>> Thought we would share the preliminary survey results.  It is still very early but, so far, you almost have 300 (285) responses which would be nearly 33%!!!  That is a tremendous response.  Generally we get about 10-15%.
>>>> 
>>>> This is just the summarized PDF synopsis.  When the survey closes we should be able to provide you with an Excel formatted report that you can manipulate as you please.
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> 
>>>> James
>>>> 
>>>> James Sakamoto
>>>> Senior Education Coordinator
>>>> GITA
>>>> 14456 East Evans Ave
>>>> Aurora, CO 80014
>>>> (720) 496-0484
>>>> jsakamoto at gita.org
>>>> 
>>>> October 24-26, GIS for Oil & Gas Pipeline Conference, Houston, TX  www.gita.org/oilgas
>>>> 
>>>> <image001.jpg>
>>>> 
>>>> 
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