Conference Surveys

YAPC::NA 2010 - 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:

Age Band:

Job Type:

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:

• homemaker
• Intern
• Technical writer/Student

Industry:

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:

• Bioinformatics
• Biotech
• Insurance
• Insurance/Financial
• Marketing
• Publishing/Printing
• Trucking. Specifically Loads Boards

Region:

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?

How many previous YAPCs have you attended?

How many Perl Workshops have you attended?

Do you plan to attend a future YAPC/Workshop?

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.

• Being a beginner in perl, I did not find a class that was for beginners at the conference.
• Everything discussed was far too advanced for my skill level.
• How about if I answer 'Why I'm glad I attended' this being my first time? WHY DIDN'T SOMEONE TELL ME SO MUCH WAS GOING ON IN PERL DEVELOPMENT! Wow! I never knew so much was going on in the community. There are a lot of great and smart people doing great things -- to help me write code easier, better, and faster. :D
• I look forward to attending another YAPC.
• I prefer Python and Ruby to perl, but work full-time as a perl developer. I find YAPC to be eerily insular and full of awkward inside jokes. Personally, I'm fairly pragmatic about what tools I use, and get tired of the "python is the oppressor" jokes. Except for the work on Moose and work that Miyagawa does, I think the majority of the perl community is living in the past.
• Limited travel budget
• There are basically 2 reasons. 1st the website was incomplete. There was a lack of information-you could click on an item to purchase-parking for example- and there was absolutely no explanation of what you were buying-none. It took several attempts to make my post conference class purchase as i got no feedback the first several times. the second reason is the presenters in many cases resembled cartoon characters: A pirate, kilted 'experts' -regardless of expertise in the field how can anyone be expected to be taken seriously when they are dressed like a character actor.

Are you a member of a local Perl Mongers user group?

If not, do you plan to find one or start one?

What other areas of the Perl Community do you contribute to?

If 'Other' please enter your area of contribution

• http://github.com/ology
• I organize my local Perl Mongers group
• None
• Perl documentation project
• StackOverflow.com

YAPC::NA 2010

Regarding YAPC::NA 2010 in Columbus, Ohio specifically, please answer the following as best you can.

When did you decide to come to this conference?

If 'Other' please let us know when

• A fellow developer friend alerted to me that it was local
• after attending OSDC.tw
• after YAPC::EU in Lisbon
• Been into Perl for a few years and wanted to experience the community first-hand.
• Heath Bair was organizing the conference and encouraged us to attend.
• I searched for topics that were being presented at OSCON
• I searched for YAPC NA
• I was an organizer.
• I've known about them since the first one, this was the first time I could fit it into my schedule
• Knowing it was coming, despite a failure to announce the call for papers
• saw #perl topic mentioning it
• was looking for a conference to attend :)
• when my manager urged me to

Were you a speaker?

Note that "similar conferences" includes other YAPCs, as well as Linux, Open Source or large technical events such as workshops.

If you weren't a speaker, would you consider speaking at a future conference?

What was your motivation for coming?

If 'Other' please let us know your motivation for coming

• Classes
• get a Perl 6 update, learn MOOSE
• I always come
• I was an organizer - to make it happen
• It's YAPC
• Just to see how it is
• learn about perl
• the price
• Thinking of learning Perl and the conference was in the town I live in.
• To be updated on the Perl community's progress and sense of direction
• to evaluate the quality of the talks
• to learn
• to learn more about perl
• To learn more about the community and what projects are going on.
• to learn some Perl
• to meet mst, RJBS, Ingy, Miyagawa, jrockway
• to raise my game
• Too look at college girls, frankly.
• Within Driving Distance

What aspects of the conference do you feel gave value for money?

If 'Other' please enter your suggestions

• filming of talks
• For $100, what wasn't value for the money. Nice job guys.
• The chance to be able to talk with other developers and experts about using the tools in CPAN to better my development.
• the overall experience and integration into the Perl community
• The training classes

Did you have holiday planned around your conference attendance?

Were there any talks you wanted to see, but missed due to clashes in the schedule?

If 'Yes', which talks did you miss?

Additional comments:

• All of the ones posted opposite mine (Murphy's Law: the ones I really wanted to see were opposite my own).
• All of the talks that were counter to my own talks, heh
• All the 'Intro to Moose' talks.
• At least 60% of the talks were interesting to me meaning I saw about half of what I wanted and missed about half.
• I'd like to have seen all of McAdams' talks, and Szabo's talks
• Many :)
• Generally, two or three times a day, there would be a conflict between "nifty toys!", "that sounds immediately useful/might reshape how I think about a problem", "I don't know what that it - I'd better find out", and "sounds iffy but he always gives good talks." Alternately between my geek, web dev, data crunching and sys admin hats. This is not really solvable or even a bad thing. I note that room size vs talk interest was generally well matched. Well done!
• Most of them. ;) In particular the Damian Channel/Perl 6 stuff
• Most. I had bad jet-lag :(
• Several got cancelled or rescheduled that I really really wanted to hear. Frustrating.
• Several, with so many tracks running it was impossible to see everything I wanted.
• So very many! Next year, I will make sure to not miss "cloning yourself for fun and profit"
• The 20 minute session made things awkward. Normally I'd want to see one, but not the other, but it'd be my only option since I couldn't attend any other sessions.
• Sooo many..... All of the 14:00 talks on Tuesday
• The most severe clash for me was between RJBS' talk on Dist::Zilla and Miyagawa's talk on Plack. Luckily, the talks were in rooms right next to each other, but it was so hard for me to decide between the 2 topics and speakers that I found myself going back and forth, missing half of each talk.
• The only talks I recall missing are a Damian talk, and RJBS talk, and a waltman talk. I also would've liked to have seen some of the other tracks - catalyst, moose, etc.
• Too many to list
• Too many to recall. Some of the best talks were scheduled against myself. And then there's always the hallway track...

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.

Were there any speakers not present, who you would like to have seen at the conference?

If 'Yes', which speakers?

Additional comments:

• I am glad that Dave Rolsky was able to attend this year.
• Dominus! But I understand the effects of the pram in the hallway.
• I did miss not having Larry Wall as a keynote speaker, but it's probably fine to give him a break every once and a while, too.
• well there are so many..

What kinds of talks would you prefer at future conferences?

Are there any topics you would specifically like to see featured?

• A step by step guide to putting a module on CPAN from dzilla to upload. How to submit patches
• Always like to see Regex reviews. Different people solve things differently.
• Anything non-web based!!!
• Automating deployment (like puppet or capistrano in Perl). Some NoSQL stuff (Casandra, Tokyo Cabinet, etc).
• best practices
• Bio::Perl Finance ETL
• Even though I'm seeking out more intermediate/advanced topics, I think the beginner track is a fantastic idea.
• Extreme programming (a.k.a. The Art of Agile Development)
• How to Contribute to CPAN, Intro to PAUSE
• How to get over programmer burn out...
• How to use Devel::Declare, how to use Devel::NYTProf effectively, and more performance oriented stuff
• I like to have a mix of practical, work-related talks, and cutting-edge technology talks.
• I would like to see more advanced Perl topics that don't require use or knowledge of a framework.
• I'd like to see a topic on the order of "Getting Started Volunteering for the Shy and Unsure".
• I'm particularly interested in security best practices for web based applications (Catalyst). I am also interested in the latest modules and tool chains for web (like Plack and Catalyst).
• KiokuDB internals Moose internals Catalyst internals Perl internals XS
• Maybe more sysadmin talks. I would say parallelization stuff but I don't think there is much at the moment for that.
• Moose, Catalyst, Dancer, Plack
• More about testing.
• More on handling Unicode, maybe?
• More Perl6 talks. More (>0!) WebGUI talks.
• More Sysadmin related topics, like packaging in production - aka, areas where cpan(minus) doesn't cut it. (Sysadmin) Tools in Perl, rather than Perl for Developers.
• More systems/infrastructure focused talks A better people/career management track
• Not quite an answer to this question: There were a couple of times when the official subject of a talk was buried by excessive use of MooseX tricks in all the examples. It leads to a clubby atmosphere. Speakers need to consider that not everyone uses the same modules, and try not to distract from the main point of the talk. (Or at least give solid explanations of any unusual code.)
• Not really a note about topics, but you should probably consider getting rid of the 20 minute talks. It's just not enough time to present anything of true value given the set up time, people coming late from a previous talk, etc. It's hard because it reduces the number of possible topics, but it also betters the quality of the topics that then get more time.
• perl debugging - using the built in debugger, and debugging modules.
• Someone mentioned the idea of a keynote from Rasmus Lerdorf. I think inviting non-Perl people to give a few relevant talks would be fantastic.
• something related to conversion to perl 6
• There are so many great modules that I've never heard of or used. I find 'Module promotional' talks to be the most valuable to me, at this point in my understanding of perl. Modern perl -- Moose, Moose, Moose!
• While this was a Modern Perl themed conference, i felt things were a little too focused on POE, Moose and Catalyst. A little more diversity would be better. Some more non-web stuff (even though I'm a web dev). That being said, I think there was also too many tracks. I'd rather have fewer, higher quality talks and a little more focus on the code. It doesn't need to be all code all the time but I felt this one was a little lacking.

How do you rate the conference?

How would you rate your overall satisfaction of the following areas of the conference?

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 Tutorial Course 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:

Standard Rate:

Concession Rate:

How did you pay for the conference fee?