Final Report From LinuxFest NorthWest 2010
Post date: May 03, 2010 5:52:20 AM
Over the two day event we handed out a little over 360 pieces of media, there was 700+ people on Saturday and 350+ on Sunday
Before we get into this report about LFNW I wish to list some information from a recent study by Dan Kennedy
Here are the reasons customers leave:
* 1% die
* 3% move away
* 5% follow a friend or relative’s advice and switch to their recommended supplier
* 9% switch due to a better price or better product
* 14% switch due to product or service dissatisfaction.
Whilst the first two may be out of your control, you should be able to do something about the other 28%.
However, all of the reasons above still only account for a total of 32%. Why then do the other 68% of customers leave a business? Simply put, they leave because of the indifference of the business – they feel unappreciated, unimportant and taken for granted.
Some of the things that we learned over the two day event at LFNW. The sixty eight percent idea by Dan Kennedy did apply during this event. It was more applied towards Ubuntu than Fedora. There were several people that were wanting another distro to try out for the reason of "Ubuntu just stopped working after recent update", After digging deeper into what happened after update, it amounted to the fact
that after a recent update several things were not working for several different people. Even though this in itself can not 100% really be stopped from happening for any distro, it seems the reason for them looking for another distro fell into the 14% reason. and then they fell into the 68% group after talking to the people at the Ubuntu booth.
Since the majority of volunteers at booths are not “qualified experts”, which is fine – provided you position yourself at your booth as an “average guy who uses Fedora” and come across as believable. My feeling is that the people at the Ubuntu booth in not knowing the answer to some of the questions, unintentionally made these few people with there problems feel unimportant and taken for granted. Which
intern made them search for another distro. This is something we need to learn as a community that it is not necessary to be an expert, but it is a necessity to never let anyone for any reason fall into this 68% group.
If the slide show is not working the link to some pictures from the event is http://picasaweb.google.com/CrossBytes/LFNW2010