YAPC::Europe 2011 - Survey Results
Introduction
The following survey results are a simple presentation of the raw data. No attempt has been made to analyse the data and compare with previous years. See forthcoming PDFs for more in depth analysis.
Click on pie charts to view larger image version.
Demographics
These questions will help us understand who our attendees are.
Attendees:
Count | Description |
---|---|
147 | Responded |
138 | No Response |
285 | Total |
51 | Response Percentage |
Age Band:
Count | Description |
---|---|
0 | under 20 |
30 | 20 - 29 |
71 | 30 - 39 |
39 | 40 - 49 |
5 | 50 - 59 |
2 | 60 and over |
Job Type:
Count | Description |
---|---|
8 | CEO/Company Director/Senior Manager |
1 | Non-Technical Manager |
14 | Technical Manager |
16 | Technical Architect/Analyst |
79 | Developer |
8 | Engineer |
6 | SysAdmin |
3 | Student |
3 | Lecturer/Teacher/Trainer |
0 | Human Resources |
5 | Researcher |
1 | Unemployed |
3 | Other |
If your position covers many roles, please base this on your most senior responsibility. Also base this on the role you perform, rather than your job title. For example, a 'QA Developer' would be a 'Developer' role, and 'Information Manager' would a Manager role (Technical or Non-Technical depending upon your responsibilites)
If 'Other' please enter your professional job role or title:
- Consultant
- Software Localizer
Industry:
Count | Description |
---|---|
1 | Automotive |
9 | Education |
3 | Engineering |
9 | Finance |
3 | Government |
35 | IT Services |
45 | Internet/Web |
0 | Legal |
0 | Logistics |
3 | Media/Entertainment |
2 | Medical/Healthcare |
4 | Property |
9 | Research |
3 | Retail |
7 | Telecommunications |
8 | Travel |
2 | Unemployed |
4 | Other |
If you or your company undertake work within mulitple industry sectors, please select the primary one you are currently working within.
If 'Other' please enter your industry sector:
- Book Publishing
- Books
- Marketing
- Software Localization
Region:
Count | Description |
---|---|
0 | Latvia |
26 | UK / Ireland |
91 | Western Europa |
15 | Eastern Europa |
7 | Southern Europa |
4 | United States / Canada |
4 | Asia / Australaisa |
0 | South America |
0 | Africa |
Please note this is the region you were a resident in, prior to attending the conference.
The Perl Community, YAPCs & Workshops
These questions are designed to help us understand our attendees level of involvement in the Perl community.
How do you rate your Perl knowledge?
Count | Description |
---|---|
7 | Beginner |
55 | Intermediate |
83 | Advanced |
How many previous YAPCs have you attended?
Count | Description |
---|---|
39 | This was my first YAPC |
Attended YAPCs | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
YAPC::Europe | 20 | 14 | 19 | 11 | 6 | 7 | 10 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 1 | - | 448 |
YAPC::NA | 9 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | - | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | 2 | 64 |
YAPC::Asia | 4 | 1 | - | - | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 11 |
YAPC::Australia / OSDC::Australia | 3 | - | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 6 |
YAPC::Israel / OSDC::Israel | 1 | - | - | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 5 |
YAPC::Russia | 5 | 2 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 9 |
How many Perl Workshops have you attended?
Count | Description |
---|---|
46 | Never attended one |
Attended Workshops | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Austrian Perl Workshop | - | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | 27 |
Belgian Perl Workshop | 3 | 4 | 3 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 20 |
French Perl Workshop | 4 | - | 1 | 2 | - | - | 1 | 1 | - | - | - | 38 |
German Perl Workshop | 13 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | - | - | 1 | 103 |
Italian Perl Workshop | 3 | - | - | - | - | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | 9 |
London Perl Workshop | 9 | 8 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | - | - | - | - | 89 |
Netherlands Perl Workshop | 4 | 1 | 3 | 2 | - | 2 | 1 | 2 | - | - | - | 58 |
Nordic Perl Workshop | 11 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | - | - | 1 | - | 70 |
Portuguese Perl Workshop | 3 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 5 |
Ukrainian Perl Workshop | 2 | 2 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 9 |
any American Perl Workshops | 3 | 2 | - | - | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | 12 |
any Russian Perl Workshops | 1 | - | 2 | - | - | - | - | - | - | 1 | - | 17 |
Other Perl Workshops | 3 | - | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 6 |
Do you plan to attend a future YAPC/Workshop?
Count | Description |
---|---|
130 | Yes |
15 | Maybe |
2 | Don't Know |
0 | No |
If no, could you tell us why?
Particularly if this is your first YAPC, we would like to understand why you would not be able or interested in attending another event like it.
- I didn't feel like I was taking much out of the conference. I go there mostly to see some of my friends, but it seems I don't get the chance to talk to most of them anyway, as everyone's too busy getting their slides ready and by the attendees dinner it's hard to talk to other people apart from the ones we sit next to.
Are you a member of a local Perl Mongers user group?
Count | Description |
---|---|
95 | Yes |
51 | No |
If not, do you plan to find one or start one?
Count | Description |
---|---|
11 | Yes |
22 | Maybe |
6 | Don't Know |
16 | No |
What other areas of the Perl Community do you contribute to?
Count | Description |
---|---|
84 | I'm a CPAN Author |
17 | I'm a CPAN Tester |
38 | I'm a Perl project developer (eg Rakudo, Catalyst, TAP, Padre, etc) |
49 | I have a technical blog (e.g. on blogs.perl, use.perl or a personal blog) |
45 | I use or contribute to PerlMonks or other Perl forums |
65 | I use IRC (e.g. #perl, #yapc, or #london.pm) |
45 | I contribute to Perl mailing lists (e.g. P5P, Perl QA, etc) |
11 | other ... |
If 'Other' please enter your area of contribution
- Co-organize (and attend) YAPC, workshop,PM-meetings, hackathons, social meetings; foundation / being board member of foundations
- Core hacker
- donate money
- GSOC/GCI
- I'm a perl5 core comitter
- Jointly provide hosting for blogs.perl.org
- Lots of contributions to Perl 6 module management stuff
- organizing Perl workshops in Germany
- Perl 5 core hacker
- perl core distribution
- workshop organizer
- write articles
YAPC::Europe 2011
Regarding YAPC::Europe 2011 in Riga, Latvia specifically, please answer the following as best you can.
When did you decide to come to this conference?
Count | Description |
---|---|
80 | I'm now a regular YAPC::Europe attendee |
8 | After YAPC::Europe 2010 in Pisa |
0 | After joining the Facebook event group |
7 | I was nominated to attend by manager/colleague |
13 | I was recommended to attend by friend/colleague |
0 | After reading an ad in a magazine |
13 | After seeing a link or advert on a Perl specific site |
1 | After seeing a link or advert on a non-Perl site |
2 | After reading an email sent to a mailing list I was in |
3 | After seeing other promotions online/in the press |
17 | other ... |
If 'Other', what else helped you decide?
- after convincing my boss to pay it
- after knowing that was about to be in Rīga
- After our PM-Meeting
- after Riga won in competition for venue
- after YAPC::Russia
- After YAPC:EU in Lisbon
- Andrew Shitov said that if you perl programmer, then you just have to be at such an event
- Found via Google after determining that my current employer will send people to conferences; I've wanted to get to a YAPC for many years.
- I only went to see friends I don't get to see otherwise.
- I was (also) there to do recruiting.
- I was invited
- If you are not on irc you do not exist ;)
- Just because I was curious about it
- my talk was accepted :)
- spontaneous recruiting run
Were you a speaker?
Count | Description |
---|---|
67 | No |
24 | No, but I have spoken before at similar conferences |
44 | Yes, and I have spoken before at similar conferences |
11 | Yes, and it was my first time as a speaker |
Note that "similar conferences" includes other YAPCs, as well as Linux, Open Source or large technical events such as workshops.
If you were a speaker, would you have been able to attend if you hadn't been speaking?
Count | Description |
---|---|
53 | Yes |
15 | No |
If you weren't a speaker, would you consider speaking at a future conference?
Count | Description |
---|---|
61 | Yes |
11 | No |
23 | Ask me later |
What was your motivation for coming?
Count | Description |
---|---|
73 | the list of speakers |
69 | the quality of the talks scheduled |
43 | to be a speaker |
102 | to meet with Perl/project co-contributors |
123 | to socialise with Perl geeks |
26 | to meet Larry Wall |
29 | to meet Damian Conway |
85 | to visit Riga or Latvia |
15 | other ... |
If 'Other', what else motivated you to attend?
- beeeeeeer
- drinkers.pm meeting
- find out about Perl related things and all the new shiny modules etc.
- General good impressions of YAPC from online participation in Perl community
- once at YAPC - allways at YAPC
- recruiting
- recruiting Perl developers
- Seeing some friends I don't get to see otherwise.
- Support the Community
- to have FUN (in general) and get new ideas and feedback on my work
- To have good time and that worked out well, thank you
- to organise by directly speaking to people
- to see prevailing Perl trends
- to understand the Perl ecosystem
- to write robust code
What aspects of the conference do you feel gave value for money?
Count | Description |
---|---|
138 | the talks / speakers |
4 | the conference bag |
56 | the tshirt |
12 | the job fair |
84 | the conference dinner |
83 | the conference venue |
95 | the city of Riga |
47 | the hallway track |
106 | the attendees |
4 | other ... |
If 'Other', what else did you think was value for money?
- drinkers.pm meeting
- few of the talks
- hands down: the P.I.M.P t-shirt
- meeting Perl people
- the wifi
Did you have holiday planned around your conference attendance?
Count | Description |
---|---|
62 | I came just for the conference |
17 | several days before only |
18 | 1 day before only |
29 | several days before and after |
11 | 1 day after only |
10 | several days after only |
Were there any talks you wanted to see, but missed due to clashes in the schedule?
Count | Description |
---|---|
84 | Yes |
60 | No |
If 'Yes', which talks did you miss?
There are always conflicts in the schedule, as it's difficult to know what everyone would like to see. However, if you could list a few talks that you missed, it would give speakers an idea whether it would be worth updating their talks for furture events.
Count | Description |
---|---|
13 | Mojolicious - A New Hope by Marcus Ramberg |
12 | bending semantics with 5.14 by Zefram |
12 | Plack basics - website best practices by Leo Lapworth |
8 | Introduction to Code Coverage by Paul Johnson |
8 | SSH Can Do That? Tips for Working More Productively with Remote Servers by Smylers |
7 | How I learned to stop worrying and love threads by Leon Timmermans |
7 | Perl 6 Lists, Arrays, and Hashes vivified: lazy, infinite, flat, slurpy, typed, bound, and LoL'd by Patrick Michaud |
6 | Dancing into Web Development by Andrew Solomon |
5 | Cool, bonsai, cool - An introduction to ElasticSearch by Clinton Gormley |
5 | Euclid, Socrates and Mill - Quality in Documentation by Matt S Trout |
5 | Extending Perl with functional macros by Rolf Langsdorf |
5 | How not to screw up your business application by Carl Mäsak |
5 | Perlude: a taste of haskell in perl by marc chantreux |
5 | State of the Parrot by Christoph Otto |
5 | Webscraping by example by Max Maischein |
5 | XML::Compile::SOAP by Mark Overmeer |
4 | Adventures in Marketing by Mark Keating |
4 | Camps: Better web development environments by Jon Jensen |
4 | DBIx::DataModel in detail by Laurent Dami |
4 | Dependency Injection - Introduction by Zbigniew Lukasiak |
4 | Encryption on the Web for everyone by Lars Dɪᴇᴄᴋᴏᴡ |
4 | HTML5: What is is, what it isn't, and should you use it? by Mallory van Achterberg |
4 | I <3 my Community by Mark Keating |
4 | Introduction to writing readable and maintainable Perl by Alex Balhatchet |
4 | Medieval Perl: charting the history of medieval texts with a modern language by Tara Andrews |
4 | Modern Perl - getting there from here by Anthony Webster |
4 | Monkey-patching, subclassing, and accidental overriding by Aaron Crane |
4 | Rakudo Evolved: speed, feedback and hackability by Jonathan Worthington |
4 | Terms of endearment - the ElasticSearch query language explained by Clinton Gormley |
4 | use types by Reini Urban |
3 | Dependency Injection and TDD by Silvano Luciani |
3 | Feel like I'm fixing to test - talk by Thomas Klausner |
3 | Getting the most out of YAPC by brian d foy |
3 | Git::CPAN::Hook - Managing CPAN installations with Git by Philippe Bruhat |
3 | Go language for Perl programmers by Andrew Shitov |
3 | Hg vs. Git by Herbert Breunung |
3 | Introduction to the Dancer web application framework by Job van Achterberg |
3 | Making data dance by Carl Mäsak |
3 | Mostly lazy DBIx::Class testing by Chisel Wright |
3 | Perl Training by Dave Cross |
3 | Postmodern Module Packaging by Ingy döt Net |
3 | Redis - A key/value store by David Leadbeater |
3 | Replacing Relational DB with Redis: a Case Study by Anton Berezin |
3 | Running legacy mod_perl with Plack by Peter Makholm |
3 | Smoking The Onion - Tales of CPAN Testers by Barbie |
3 | Spark - Seriously Awesome Form Handling by James Laver |
3 | why time is difficult by Zefram |
2 | ActiveState, Perl and the Cloud by Ingy döt Net |
2 | Benchmark::Perl::Formance for the masses by Steffen Schwigon |
2 | Debugging Perl 6 Grammars by Jonathan Worthington |
2 | Demystify file system hierarchy for deployments by Jozef Kutej |
2 | Extended meta-data on backpan/cpan by Mark Overmeer |
2 | Git::Repository - Controling Git from Perl by Philippe Bruhat |
2 | Hack For Japan by Yusuke Kawasaki |
2 | How CPAN Testers helped me improve my module by Léon Brocard |
2 | Sanitizing HTML 5 with Perl 5 by Uwe Voelker |
2 | TAP Juggling by Steffen Schwigon |
2 | Tapper test scheduling by Maik Hentsche |
2 | The Perl Foundation: Year in Review by Karen Pauley |
2 | The State of the Acmeism by Ingy döt Net |
2 | What good Perl editors should be able by Herbert Breunung |
2 | Writing Plugins for Padre, the Perl IDE by Gabor Szabo |
1 | App::TimeTracker, Metaprogramming & Method Modifiers by Thomas Klausner |
1 | E-Commerce usability and how to test it by Jure Kodzoman |
1 | Object-Oriented Programming in Perl 6 (Teaching Class) by Jonathan Worthington |
1 | Oriental Perl for Enterprise by Yusuke Kawasaki |
1 | Roman numbers and Perl by Jean Forget |
1 | The Business Aware Programmer by Abigail |
1 | The Legend of Data::Query - a LINQ's awakening by Matt S Trout |
1 | The SNMP::Class library by Athanasios Douitsis |
1 | working with databases by Laurent Dami |
Additional comments:
- Almost all. I did too many other things... No clashed in schedule, it was just me.
- Don't remember, not that important.
- I can't remember :)
- I generally wanted to see two of the four talks in every time slot.
- I get up late, so the my personal schedule does not agree with the conference schedule. :)
- I mostly missed talks because they were in the secondary rooms despite having more people interested in them then the ones in the main room (and the room would get to the point of not having more seats available).
- I spoke to the people whose talks I missed :)
- I was only be able to tick "No", because the organizers were friendly enough to do some re-scheduling
- Many of the web devel talks where scheduled in the same time slot
- Missed Damian and Larry. Keynotes should not be given in the morning when the average perler is thinking about leaving his/her bed.
- Not that many in fact, the schedule was pretty much well layed-out for me
- Several talks related to similar topics were happening at the same time. Other talks on related topics were spread on different days/rooms instead of being in a track (web topics, functional programing topic). I also missed two talks I wanted to see because they clashed with mine. :-) Or because I was too busy polishing my own slides. :-( Also, the more tracks, the more clashes will happen. Having a topic per track should help avoid them.
- Too many interesting talks
- too many to count
- Too many, as usual.
- Some web-development or sysadmin related talks happened at the same time (e.g. tuesday at 16:10 Plack, Mojolicius and webscraping at the same time, tuesday at 16:55 talks about ssh and snmp at the same time)
- There were a few, but the only one that particularly sticks in my mind is the "getting the most from YAPC" intro session on Monday morning. Not that I expected it to have anything all that surprising, but it would have been nice to see whether there were any tips unique to YAPC vs. other conferences.
Were there any speakers not present, who you would like to have seen at the conference?
Count | Description |
---|---|
44 | Yes |
91 | No |
If 'Yes', which speakers?
Count | Description |
---|---|
9 | Mark-Jason Dominus |
8 | Tatsuhiko Miyagawa |
6 | Adam Kennedy |
6 | Paul Fenwick |
4 | Allison Randal |
4 | Audrey Tang |
4 | chromatic |
4 | Curtis "Ovid" Poe |
4 | Randal Schwartz |
4 | Ricardo Signes |
3 | Michael Schwern |
3 | Piers Cawley |
2 | Chia-liang Kao (高嘉良) |
2 | Dave Rolsky |
2 | Jos Boumans |
2 | Marty Pauley |
2 | Tim Bunce |
2 | Tom Christiansen |
1 | Andreas J. König |
1 | Andy Wardley |
1 | Ash Berlin |
1 | Chris Prather |
1 | Daisuke Maki |
1 | Dave Mitchell |
1 | David Wheeler |
1 | Greg McCarroll |
1 | Jonathan Rockway |
1 | Jon Orwant |
1 | Josh McAdams |
1 | Moritz Lenz |
1 | Sebastian Riedel |
1 | Stevan Little |
1 | 劉康民 (GUGOD) |
1 | Yves Orton |
1 | Zahatski Aliaksandr |
Additional comments:
- It'd be nice to start seeing "ambassador" talks from non-Perl folk, who come specifically to hit us on the head with what the other cool kids are doing, but which Perl & the community are missing out on (due to inertia, not-invented-here syndrome, etc).
- I would like to have heard more from the Moose's mouth
- More non-European speakers, e.g. miyagawa
- people who are *not* Perl programmers
- So many CPAN authors.. :)
- Flute template talk
What kinds of talks would you prefer at future conferences?
Count | Description |
---|---|
2 | More beginner level talks |
19 | More intermediate level talks |
32 | More advanced level talks |
84 | It's about right |
7 | No preference |
Are there any topics you would specifically like to see featured?
- - exception handling - documentation on intermediate level, more documentation "strategy", not just a POD intro
- deployment web development frameworks perl 6 modern perl
- Email clients Web browser clients Anti-virus and "bad stuff" protection
- GUI, HOP, mathematical related
- hmm, BOFs (birds-of-feather sessions) seem to have been dropped, yes? I'm presuming there must have been some conscious decision about this (or was it perhaps lack of space at the venue?) Either way it'd be nice if they came back...
- HTML5, Javascript, JQuery
- I don't think any key topics were missed.
- I'd like to see fewer talks about Moose and so-called "modern" (read: bloated, complex to deploy and install) Perl.
- I'd like to see more amusing talks. A lot were quite dry and while useful, the days are long enough to warrant more amusement to keep people perky. Also, I'd like to see less talks on getting started with Dancer. There seemed to be a lot of them this year.
- I'd like to see more talks about hard, technical subjects. Some of the entertainment-heavy talks are fun and all, but I'd appreciate if I could still learn a bit more at YAPCs. But then again, I'm a veteran.
- I'd like to see some talks on subjects not necessarily Perl-related.
- Introduction to Perl internals
- Introduction to XS
- Large scale design, data crunching, algorithms
- Moose
- more about perl internals, perl in perl, how to help/join the core
- more end-user personal experiences, because non-developers need to learn how other people work.
- More on new core features
- More on working solutions rather than presenting "alpha" software (suggestion: make a separate "work-in-progress" track".
- more Perl 6 talks
- more sysadmin stuff like Smylers SSH talk
- More sysadmin topics, scripting.
- more talks about modernising core Perl
- More talks centered on the current popular CPAN modules on the Web and web frameworks category
- No, but both beginner and advanced tracks are very helpful. And I noticed the ssh talk was one of the best-attended -- a non-Perl talk. So nothing wrong with some of that distantly-related stuff that helps people.
- No, just cool new stuff
- Not as many core talks (e.g. there were several talks on how to bend the perl5 syntax) would be great. While it's fun to listen to and see what can possibly be done with Perl, it doesn't add any business value to most projects.
- perl6 objects, how write module on perl6, more oractice
- perlguts, guts guts tasty guts
- repeatable environment builds and keeping your application stable through CPAN/perl version changes
- some more technical talks would have been nice
- Talks on how companies use Perl - stories from the trenches.
- Would like to see some comparison talks, with similar modules, highlighting pros and cons of each.
- YAPC 2012 should try to have a "Beginners Track" again (but I'm one of the organizers anyway)
How do you rate the conference?
How would you rate your overall satisfaction of the following areas of the conference?
Choices | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Newsletters/Updates | 81 | 57 | 4 | - | - |
Web site | 82 | 59 | 4 | - | - |
Registration process | 93 | 42 | 7 | 2 | - |
Directions/Maps | 92 | 45 | 6 | 1 | - |
Content of the talks | 53 | 79 | 12 | - | - |
Schedule efficiency | 69 | 62 | 13 | 1 | - |
BOFs | 8 | 14 | 7 | 6 | - |
Social events | 67 | 65 | 12 | 1 | - |
Parking | 8 | 3 | 1 | - | - |
Facilities | 75 | 53 | 5 | 1 | - |
Food service | 86 | 48 | 9 | 2 | - |
Accommodation | 86 | 43 | 5 | - | - |
Staff | 112 | 31 | 1 | - | - |
Overall experience | 106 | 38 | 2 | - | - |
Value for price | 117 | 23 | - | - | - |
Key:
1 = Very Satisfied
2 = Somewhat satisfied
3 = Somewhat un-satisfied
4 = Very un-satisfied
5 = N/A
The Conference Fee
In order to help future organisers gauge an appropriate conference fee, how much would you (or your company) have paid for a conference ticket? Feel free to provide an answer for all rates, where corporate rate would be paid for by your company (including a Master Class place), standard rate would be the regular price paid by attendees in paid employment, and lastly the concession rate for anyone who holds proof that they are in fulltime education or are unemployed.
Corporate Rate:
Count | Fee |
---|---|
4 | € 1000 |
1 | € 800 |
1 | € 600 |
9 | € 500 |
2 | € 400 |
3 | € 350 |
12 | € 300 |
3 | € 299 |
3 | € 250 |
5 | € 200 |
1 | € 175 |
2 | € 160 |
5 | € 150 |
1 | € 120 |
3 | € 100 |
1 | € ?? |
Standard Rate:
Count | Fee |
---|---|
2 | € 300 |
1 | € 200-300 |
6 | € 200 |
2 | € 199 |
11 | € 150 |
1 | € 125 |
4 | € 120 |
47 | € 100 |
6 | € 99 |
1 | € 80 |
2 | € 75 |
3 | € 70 |
1 | € 50 |
Concession Rate:
Count | Fee |
---|---|
7 | € 100 |
1 | € 79 |
2 | € 75 |
1 | € 70 |
26 | € 50 |
1 | € 49 |
1 | € 45 |
2 | € 40 |
3 | € 30 |
3 | € 25 |
2 | € 20 |
1 | € 15 |
2 | € 10 |
1 | € 1 |
How did you pay for the conference fee?
Count | Description |
---|---|
39 | N/A - I was a speaker |
3 | N/A - I was a sponsor |
49 | My company paid |
45 | I paid out of my own pocket |
0 | I wasn't able to attend |