Jim Kuzdrall wrote: > > 1) higher attendance percentage: > Assuming that subject matter and level of the presentations is the > primary draw, how do we find topics that appeal to a wider range of the > contact group? Do you ask those who attend regularly, as we did at the > MerriLUG meeting? > > If our hypothesis is correct that subject matter which is is wrong > or slightly off target holds back attendance, these are exactly the > wrong people to ask. The people who don't attend must be asked. But > how?
It's hard asking people who don't attend. Man-in-the-street interviews are not targeted. Asking fellow computer professionals you know can be enlightening, and I encourage everyone to do it. If we ask the people who attended meetings with higher attendance than those with low attendance, we are asking a larger percentage of people who normally do not attend meetings. So, analyzing the common factors in highly-attended meetings are likely to indicate more popular topics. > I have no winning solution to offer. However, one approach might be > an auto-search the discussion list history looking for the top 25 > threads rated by the number of different individuals posting, not the > number of posts. What brings lurkers out of the woodwork? Great question. Anyone volunteering for mailing list analysis? I'll bet most modern languages would parse mboxes pretty easily. > 2) expanding the contact group- > Before beating the bushes, it would be nice to know if the bushes > can be expected to yield much of anything. There is a measure called > market penetration that might give guidance here. > What percentage of registered professional engineers join their > primary professional group, the National Society of Professional > Engineers (NSPE). I don't know. What percentage of businesses have membership in the > Chamber of Commerce? Less than 8% > What percentage of gun owners belong to the National Rifle Association? Less than 5% >What percentage of the eligible over 55 > group belong to the AARP? I don't know. And it's 50 now. And someone I know is NOT happy about that. (Add any groups you feel are more relevant.) ACM, IEEE, etc. > > Statistics like the above are quite easy to get. They give an idea > of the number of a target population can be attracted by a well funded, > well organized group. Do you expect it to be closer to 90% or 10%? > > (You might also look at the percentage of the members that attend > meetings in these groups.) Meeting attendance is even lower, certainly. Both percentages are likely in the area of 10%. So,... Let's assume 60 million Linux users worldwide, out of 6 billion people, or approximately 1%. Since New Hampshire has around 1.5 million people, let's assume 1% of them use Linux, 10% of them join the group, and 10% of them attend a meeting. That still means we should be able to double or triple the number of people attending the meetings. And the high peak meetings confirm that thesis. > Next, compare gnhLUG's market penetration with that of the other > organizations. Go to the Bureau of Labor statistics. How many > computer professionals reside in NH and northeastern Massachusetts? > What percentage of these does the gnhlug-discuss mailing list > represent? How does that percentage compare with other technical > organizations that you would class with gnhLUG? GBCACM (http://www.gbcacm.org/website/about.php) claims 1500+ members, although they have a different mandate. BCS, at its peak, exceeded 35,000, with a much larger market. > If gnhLUG has a much smaller percentage, more advertising is likely > to help. If the market penetration is average, there will not be much > long term gain from the recruiting effort. A friend of a friend was in charge of marketing and advertising (two distinctly different fields) for RDI, at one time a consulting powerhouse in the mid-west. When asked how new customers found him, he explained "Nothing worked." A yellow pages ad got no response. Speaking at the local Chamber got no interest. Sponsoring a Little League team didn't work. But getting the word out there through every channel did eventually get people to call the company, each with a different and unique way of having stumbled into it. > > 3) expand the contact group outside of computer professionals- > How does one identify non-computer professional groups that would be > interested in Linux and the type of help that gnhLUG can provide? > > I will toss out one idea, then run for cover. > > Perhaps gnhLUG should run an "Ask Dr. Linux" column in the local > papers. (Sort of a Dear Abbie for computer users.) From the responses, > the group could get a feeling for the kind of people that want help and > what areas presentations should target. Answering the questions could > be a collaborative effort on gnhlug-discuss. Interesting idea. > Anyway there is my proposed approach for the record. If anyone > eventually wants to explore it, the list archive on the gnhLUG server > will enshrine it for indeterminate eons. > And future generations can analyze the wiki and mailing list archives for the results. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ gnhlug-org mailing list gnhlug-org@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-org/
