[vox] LUGOD meeting attendance and new-user signups

[Bill Kendrick]

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 12:40:29PM -0800, Eric Engelhard wrote:
> [deleted long method that could probably been accomplished in 7 lines
> of R... kidding, Bill]

Heh, I was waiting for someone to say that. ;)


> Cool graph. It is interesting to see the waxing and waning of new
> memberships. I wonder how complicated the forces were: dotcom boom and
> bust, rise of more user friendly distros, wider acceptance in the user
> market, competition from new MS and Apple products... departure of
> colorful characters (or at least a wider orbit), etc.

I bet a big chunk of it is simply whether or not the membership forms
were available at the meeting, and whether anyone running the meeting
remembered to mention them.  (Heck, at some meetings, I've gone so far
as to _hand them out_ to all of the new people.)

Antoher fun analysis could be examining the names of attendees
and figuring out when new names appear.  Though sometimes we only
catch first names, or don't know how to spell the name, or type/spell
it wrong sometimes. ;)

-bill!