Re: [GSAS-board] Plant auction

["Hess, Clay A" <clay.a.hess@boeing.com>]

I am not sure the histogram is complete.  Do we monitor when people show up 
too?  Because I do know the audience changes over time in both directions.  New 
people show up, other people leave.  Just an observation. 
Clay Hess
787 Fuselage Systems Integration Manager and Team Leader
425-931-4322

----- Original Message -----
From: gsas-board-bounces@thekrib.com <gsas-board-bounces@thekrib.com>
To: GSAS board members and alumni <gsas-board@thekrib.com>
Sent: Tue Jan 05 10:21:13 2010
Subject: Re: [GSAS-board] Plant auction

On Tue, 5 Jan 2010, Phil Lacefield Jr. wrote:

>>> I certainly won't participate if it's moved to a Saturday.  I know I'm
> sounding like a broken record... we already devote a ton of time at the
> normal meetings to auctions, and the general auction is crazy long.
>
> Now see, I don't get that.  Isn't that the whole point of the Feb meeting is
> a plant auction?  And if it's grown to the point where it needs to be
> longer, and our only choice is Saturday, why wouldn't we want to move it
> there?  The auctions make us a LOT of money, as we've seen, and the more
> money we have the more cool speakers we can fly in from elsewhere. I think
> our membership really digs the auctions, both the after-meeting ones and the
> big ones, simply looking at the attendance proves this.  Why not give the
> membership more of what they want? And who cares how long the auctions are
> if the items up for bid are good, everyone's happy AND the GSAS makes money
> to support things throughout the year?

I am stating that *I* care how long the auctions are, and that I will not 
participate in a second Saturday auction.  I am not even sure I have the 
stomach to participate in the one in April this year.  I really don't want 
to rehash it, but it's a lot of work, and *not* every member is interested 
in sitting around for 5 hours.

I attribute the increased attendance at the auctions to the increased 
publicity for them, not to the increased hours.  You have to look at the 
attrition over time to really get a good picture of whether folks like 
"more".

Here's a rough histogram of when bidders checked out at the 
April auction:

hour of auction # of checkouts

11:00 hour      6
Noon hour       3
1 PM hour       3
2 PM hour       13
3 PM hour       8
4 PM ~ 4:45     16
stayed to end   24

And in last year's plant auction:

begin - 7:59            4
8:00 - 8:59             14
9:00-9:43               14
stayed to end (9:44)    22

Only 1/3 made it until the end last April.  Lots of people trickled out in 
the second half.

   - Erik

-- 
Erik Olson                                                        Sent from my 
crusty old Linux box
erik at thekrib dot com
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