[Omaha.pm] Help the Perl community better understand its users at perlsurvey.org

[Andy Lester <andy@petdance.com>]

(Please feel free to forward this to anyone who might be able to  
help, such as other mailing lists. -- Andy)

What sort of programmer uses Perl?  Do most Perl programmers use it  
as a primary language, or just write the occasional script?  And are  
there really as few women as conventional wisdom says?  Kirrily  
Robert wants to know, and wants anyone around the world who uses Perl  
to help by answering a simple five-minute survey at perlsurvey.org.

Kirrily's goal is to "take a snapshot of the Perl world as it  
currently stands."  As an active member of the Perl community, she's  
often asked questions about Perl's users and is only left to  
"hypothesise, generalise, and hand-wave."  Further, software  
communities can often be an echo chamber where people only hear from  
like-minded people. The Perl Survey is an attempt to break out of  
that echo chamber and hear from all Perl users around the world,  
regardless of skill level, not just the core users most active in  
vocal communities.

An interesting part of the survey is asking the respondent's salary,  
if they choose to release it.  "I hear a lot of talk about the going  
rate for Perl programmers," Kirrily says, "and whether organizations  
that claim they can't hire Perl programmers simply aren't paying  
enough." Correlating results with job experience and types of  
languages known could shed light on the topic.  The survey's reach  
could help users around the world.  "Salary information can be very  
hard to find out for anywhere other than the US," says Kirrily, an  
Australian.

The survey will be open until September 30, 2007.  Then, in October,  
Kirrily will be announcing the results and releasing the raw data,  
minus email addresses, under a Creative Commons "CC-BY" license. Her  
hope is that other interested people will provide their own analyses  
of the results.

For further information, and to participate if you use Perl at all,  
visit perlsurvey.org.

Thanks,
xoxo,
Andy

--
Andy Lester => andy@petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance