Barbie

I mentioned in my last post that I was working on a Survey Plugin for Labyrinth. The plugin is used within the YAPC Conference Survey system, which has now been running for several YAPC events over the last 5 years. I had promised to try and release the complete survey site last year, but with it being a Labyrinth based site setup, I didn't want to release it without releasing Labyrinth first. Now that's done I can concentrate on getting the Survey Plugin and the complete survey system on CPAN.

This year I will be running the YAPC::NA and YAPC::Europe surveys as per usual. However, this year I am delighted to say I have also been asked to handle the survey for the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop too. Hopefully if all goes to plan, this will provide the test bed for many other workshops to provide surveys.

The Conference Surveys themselves started in 2006, and have provided some very interesting feedback for organisers. While event organisers and myself never expect to get 100% response from all attendees, the levels that we do get is absolutely phenomenal. With this kind of success, I would be very interested to see whether the same Survey system can be used by other non-Perl events. There is certainly nothing that prevents a non-Perl (or even a non-tech) event from using the system. Last year I did have a query from a non-Perl event, but the system wasn't ready for a stand-alone release, and I wasn't able to set anything up. However, this year, with a CPAN release coming soon, I am more hopeful that others might be able to use the system.

If you are an organiser for an event where you think a survey would be useful for feedback, please do get in touch. If I cannot host an instance for you, once I get a full release on CPAN, I can provide help and advice for getting your own hosting instance running.

Cross-posted from Memoirs of a Roadie