Sunshine Of Your Love
Posted on 17th July 2014
The survey results for YAPC::NA 2014 are now online.
Even we with lower numbers of attendees this year, 27% of you took the time to respond to the survey. As always, this doesn't necessarily allow us to see the whole picture, but hopefully it is enough of a cross-section of the attendees to help us improve future events. Once again we had a healthy number of respondees for whom this was their first YAPC, many having never attendeed a workshop either.
There was a bit of a mixed reaction throughout the survey. Although having read the feedback from the talk evaluations, there was a lot of positive comments, and several words of encouragement for some of the new speakers, which was great to see. Overall it seems to have been another great conference, although there are areas of communication that many felt could be improved.
I see I'll have to expand the options for the question "What other areas of the Perl Community do you contribute to?", as firstly I would include hacking on Perl core, as part of a Perl project (i.e. a group of great people doing great work to improve Perl), but also to include a new option; I donate to one of the funds managed by TPF or EPO. During the conference I saw a few Twitter posts about contributing to some of the Perl funds, which I think came about following Dan Wright's presentation. It is great that so many have donated, big and small amounts, to the various funds. They all help to improve and promote Perl, and give us good reasons to continue putting together great conferences and workshops every year.
It was great to see any good list of suggestions for topics this year, and I hope that speakers new and old, get some ideas for future talks from them.
Lastly it does seem that the location question, really does depend where the current location is. The higher numbers last year may also indicate that Austin was easier to get to for most people, whereas a more easterly location, such as Florida, may restrict the ability to attend for those on the west coast. It would be interesting to see whether a similar opposite trend would result if the conference was held in Nevada, California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah or Arizona. There must be several Perl Monger groups in those states, so if you're in one, perhaps think about balancing out the number of eatern hosting states ;)
Comments
The Location Question
First of all, the survey results list New England twice, both with 16 and 11 people voting for it. That doesn't seem quite right to. Second, what's happening with Canada? It's YAPC::NA, not YAPC::USA, yet the question was only about whether it's easy to get for various areas in the US. We have had YAPC::NA in Canada in 2001 and 2005; I'd say it's time to return to the country.Posted by Abigail on Thursday, 17th July 2014
Survey Fixes
Already fixed the two New Englands, bit of a cut-n-paste error on my part. Very good point about Canada, and I'll make sure to include Canadian territories into the options for next year.Posted by Barbie on Thursday, 17th July 2014
How I rate the 'How do you rate the conference?'
One comment about the way the answers to 'How do you rate the conference?' is tabulated. Instead of columns 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and use a legend to explain what the numbers represent, perhaps directly use Very Satisfied, Somewhat satisfied, Somewhat un-satisfied, Very un-satisfied, N/A.Posted by Steven Haryanto on Friday, 18th July 2014
re: How I rate the 'How do you rate the conference?'
I did initially use the full headings, but the display looks clumsy. However, there is already a key below the table to explain what the headings are.Posted by Barbie on Friday, 18th July 2014
