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