2010-09-02 MEETING PROPOSAL: discussion on Annual User Survey

[Jon Masters]

Folks,

I would like to propose that you please discuss my proposal for an
annual Fedora User Survey, as originally raised with FESCo:

https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/453

The point of this survey is to ask users (and potential users) what they
think of the current Fedora direction, the User_base, and other topics.
To include gathering information about the user demographic, and to feed
into future planning efforts on Fedora direction. Also, it's been 14
releases and we've yet to really ask our customers what they think!

I was present at the FESCo meeting, wherein it was decided that such a
matter was the purview of the Fedora Board, who should discuss this. I
am going to raise this with the Fedora Marketing group, where we can
discuss possible ways to IMPLEMENT a survey, but that does not have to
gate the discussion giving a mandate to perform the survey initially.

Clearly, all surveys have an inherent bias to them, but we've had
anthropological studies performed on Fedora in the past and there are
known ways to make surveys less tainted. There are also independent
pollsters available who could be contracted to do this if needed. I
would hope that the Board would see value in gathering opinion on the
state of update policy, intended user base, though this should not block
current ongoing efforts to implement tighter controls on such things.

Jon.