2008 GMOD Community Survey
This page is under construction.
The first ever GMOD Community Survey was conducted in the last half of October 2008. Almost 100 people participated in the survey, providing feedback and suggestions on everything from GMOD Components to GMOD Meetings to hardware to research interests. This survey provides us with our first comprehensive view of the GMOD user community, what it is using and happy with, as well as what needs improvement and where we should focus our energies in the future.
Highlights of the survey are on this page. The complete report summarizing all multiple choice questions and free text answers is also available.
Contents
GMOD Components
The survey asked participants which GMOD Components they used. Here were the most popular responses:
| % Using | Component |
|---|---|
| 70.8% | GBrowse |
| 36.0% | Chado |
| 30.3% | Apollo |
| 21.3% | BioMart |
| 13.5% | Pathway Tools |
| 10.1% | CMap |
| 10.1% | GMODTools |
| 10.1% | InterMine |
GMOD Servers
The survey also asked several questions about the servers GMOD components are running on.
See Computing Requirements for recommendations.
Operating System
Operating systems in use had a definite skew towards Unix based systems:
| # Responses | Operating System |
|---|---|
| 55 | Linux |
| 8 | Mac OS X |
| 6 | Solaris |
| 2 | Windows |
| 1 | Unspecified Unix |
Current Server Sufficient?
We also asked users to describe their current server hardware (not summarized here, but [http://gmod.org/extras/2008GMODCommunitySurvey.html#GMOD_Servers available in the survey), and whether or not their servers were sufficient to meet their current needs. Responses to the latter question are summarized here.
| # Responses | Answer |
|---|---|
| ~30 | Sufficient (at least for now) |
| 8 | Need more memory |
| 8 | Faster/More CPUs/Servers |
| 5 | Faster/More disk |
GMOD Meetings
The survey included a section on GMOD Meetings.
- 24 of 25 respondents thought meetings were reasonably to exceptionally useful.
- 21 of 23 respondents thought meetings were reasonably to exceptionally well run and organized
- 21 of 31 respondents who have not attended meetings cited time, cost and/or distance as a reason for not attending.
See Meetings for a summary of past and upcoming meetings.
GMOD Project
The survey asked several questions about the project overall.
Most Satisfied With
There were 59 responses to the question:
- What aspects of the GMOD project are you most satisfied with?
Popular responses were:
| # Responses | Aspect / Component |
|---|---|
| 23 | GBrowse |
| 17 | Support and active community |
| 8 | Chado |
| 8 | Software tools quality, maintenance, breadth and functionality |
| 6 | Open Source |
| 6 | Apollo |
Least Satisfied With
There were 44 responses to the question:
- What aspects of the GMOD project are you least satisfied with?
Recurring responses were:
| # Responses | Aspect / Component |
|---|---|
| 14 | Documentation |
| 8 | Chado |
| 7 | Difficult configuration and installation |
| 5 | Integration and coordination |
| 3 | None |
Next 12 to 18 Months
There were 47 responses to the question:
- What would you like to see GMOD work on in the next 12 to 18 months?
Recurring responses were:
| # Responses | Task |
|---|---|
| 18 | Documentation |
| 14 | Integration |
| 11 | GBrowse: testing, speed, Web 2.0, glyph documentation, features |
| 5 | Chado: Chado: PostgreSQL 8.3 support, phenotypes, integration with Apollo, functional annotation |
| 3 | Training |
| 3 | Improve what we already have. |
GMOD Help Desk
The survey asked several questions about the GMOD Help Desk.
Questions asked included:
- Please rank the relative performance of the Help Desk in each of 5 areas.
- Please rank what the priorities of the Help Desk should be in each of those 5 areas (responses summarized below)
- Are there other areas the Help Desk should allocate time to?
- What training offerings would be most helpful to you or your colleagues?
- Several questions about holding a GMOD Course in Europe and Asia/Pacific. (responses summarized below).
Help Desk Priorities
The question:
- Please rank what the priorities of the Help Desk should be.
resulted in this priority ranking for these 5 areas:
- Answering User Questions
- GMOD Web Site
- Developer Support
- Education
- Outreach and Community Building
GMOD Course in Europe
- 25 respondents were definitely or probably interested in attending a GMOD course in Europe in 2009.
- Of three possible locations given (UK, France, Netherlands), the UK was the preferred location for a course.
Note: We are moving forward with plans to hold a GMOD Course in Oxford, UK in 2009. Watch the website for details.
GMOD Course in Asia/Pacific
21 respondents were definitely or probably interested in attending a GMOD course in Asia/Pacific in 2009.
When asked what locations respondents could make it to, these locations had more than one response:
| # Responses | Location |
|---|---|
| 5 | Austrailia |
| 5 | China |
| 3 | Japan |
| 3 | Singapore |
| 2 | India |
Note: We will investigate possible locations and interest in a GMOD Course in Asia/Pacific during the last half of 2009 and during 2010.
