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See the Summary here: http://ia15.org/survey/87%20viewanalytics.htm

Analysis

We ran the survey for 20 days, received 87 results out of a potential 290 individuals invited. We achieved a 30% response rate to this survey by the invited 290 Backstage members. This is a great response by any measure and shows that a good portion of people in the Local care to give input on the direction that the website heads towards.

For the most part, the results were predictable but with a few surprises, and the comments submitted were constructive.

Most surprising (to me) was that 72% agreed with the statement that if the staff and officers used the website more then so would the members. This is a significant result in that it shows a correlation between keeping the site up to date with current activities and news would bring in higher usage, which would be a good thing for communications seeing that most respondents only check the website occasionally (59% monthly or less often), due to the perception that the sites are not up to date (43% think site is not up to date). Also, among the favored methods of receiving news about the Local, email had a very strong showing, just behind The Cue Sheet and the Official website. Which is a bit strange, since not much of our communications to the members is sent via email, but shows that they would not only be open to it but probably like it if news were sent that way. It was also a little surprising, but nice, to see the Official website rank so high and the Backstage to be lower than email, again a nice surprise.

The least surprising result was that 47% of the respondents would contribute to the site(s) if they were offered a donut or a bagel. Who would have thought…?

39% of the respondents feel the online presence of IA15 is lacking in some way, while 14% felt it was more than they need, and 28% are fairly happy with it. Those that answered in the “Other” category on this question were generally saying what the site specifically was lacking. The Backstage site was a bit more favored but 43% were neutral over which site they prefer. 43% feel the site(s) are not kept up to date, while only 9% did feel things were up to date. This seems to show a need for more information sharing on a timely basis.

2/3rds would like to be able to report their availability online, either via a webform or email. We used this opportunity to promote the fact that Availablility can currently be reported via email, a fact that many members are still unaware of. Unsurprisingly, adoption of Twitter amongst the membership seems very unlikely at the present time, with 60% of the respondents indicating that they don’t give a hoot about Twitter.

As far as those willing to pony up $1/year to help pay to keep the Backstage viable we had 69% say they would, 22% wouldn’t, and 9% abstaining from answering. Working out the math, this percentage would be just enough to pay the yearly fee Ning is going to start charging. Similar numbers said they would prefer the sites be consolidated. These two points taken together come up with a rather inclusive result, and if people don’t come up with the money in time for us to continue the Backstage site then it will go dark. At that point, the membership is probably going to want the Local to pick up some of the slack I think.

Speaking for myself, I would prefer it if we consolidated the sites into a single site. Let Facebook pick up some of the slack on the social side that people like (sharing photos, events, open discussions, etc.) The Ning site is really nice in that it is absolutely painless to maintain and is secure. The worst part about the Official site is that we don’t have the security on it that we want yet. There might be time to install the security feature hopefully before TechReady or sometime soon afterwards. By the way, here is a link to the announcement of Ning’s pricing structure: http://about.ning.com/announcement/?xg_source=announcement_bar

In conclusion, the thought occurs to me that one possible, and desirable, alternative is to roll the Backstage into the Official site by having the Local pay the additional $200/year hosting fee to Ning. This would solve the security issues we have, preserve the data we would lose if the Backstage goes dark, save countless (current and future) hours of administrative time, and entail much less of a learning curve for the user base. Other things that would need to happen if we went this route would include some of the following: discussion forums would have to become moderated, some groups might need to be more or less private depending on their nature, etc.

respectfully submitted by
Brian Foley
on behalf of the Web Committee