This weekend I reviewed the results from our member survey. I’ll summarize them below with a little bit of commentary.
Introduction
Ten surveys were filled out. I had hoped to get more data than this, but it might not matter because many of the responses seemed to support one another. Hopefully the data is representative. These responses will be used to direct the group this year, though we can also change course as we go so keep the feedback coming!
I didn’t do any statistical analysis, and I’m not sure which results are mathematically significant. Deal with it, Andrew 
.
Scheduling
Most people want to
- meet once or twice per month
- at ThreeFortyNine
- on Tuesdays or Thursdays
- a little bit later in the evening.
With that in mind, in 2012 we will be meeting at ThreeFortyNine on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. starting on February 16. I hope that meeting once per month instead of twice per month will help me to keep on top of things a little bit better, although most respondents also said that short notice of topics wasn’t a big deal.
Look for a blog post about our February meeting shortly.
Content
Most respondents want to do some programming or lots of programming during meetings, and most people seem eager for work-along topics. There were also some comments asking for more technical content, and the words “hardcore” and “hack” came up once or twice. Expect to bring your laptop to meetings.
There is interest in guest speakers, but it seems clear that workshops from our members are also very popular. I welcome suggestions for guest speakers and volunteers to present, as well as topic requests. I do hope to announce topics a little bit more in advance, so please get in touch soon!
There is quite a lot of interest in working on a project together. This is interesting, and a little bit tricky because of our varied backgrounds. I’m not sure how to approach this, so please let me know what you suggest.
There is an even split of users who want to use HackGuelph time to work on their own projects and users who don’t. I think that we’ll shelve this idea for now, but it may come back later in the year.
Communication
The top three methods for keeping in touch with the group were the Twitter account, the mailing list and the old blog. These numbers were all quite close, though I hope that the blog-followers have all found their way here by now. I will keep all three of these things going.
There is also a small group of users who hang out in the Guelph Web Maker Meetup IRC channel (#gwmm on Freenode). Feel free to check that out as well.
Final thoughts
There were a few responses that suggested other directions for the group to take, and if you are disappointed with what you have read above I apologize. The support for these decisions was pretty clear, and I hope that everybody is still able to find some of what they want in our meetings.
See you in February!