A survey most likely takes more resources; openSUSE has two great events coming, in which I assume people are expecting users (and in Prague you will most likely have 'potential users'). So a maybe more reasonable approach would be based on focus groups which is most likely more profitable to openSUSE.
Sampling a small group of users that is not representative of the userbase isn't the way to approach this. You need to talk to a larger representative sample than "those who can afford to go to the conference in Prague".
If you take things seriously, it's not necessarily a 'small group'; one quick example that I know from the top of my head. Portugal as 11 million inhabitants; A sample for this population would be 1064 questionnaires to get a 3/5% error margin. Problem #1 - How large is the openSUSE user base... This defeats the whole purpose of having a decent survey; but your are right, technically, it's impossible since we can't measure our Universe.
Not that getting opinions there is a bad idea, but it's not the only source for data.
It's all about resources. We use what we have, and if openSUSE invested in the conference/summit, I don't see why not squeezing some juice out of it. Spare a few millions to Nielsen or any other like them, and I'm sure they will provide outstanding work... the big issue is... do we have a few millions to spend with AC Nielsen ? :) (or any other like them? I tend to say they are the best ones since when it comes to consumer profiling they are the best).
This would be most likely my first pick, since surveys are not really realiable...
I would disagree that they're not reliable - they're reliable when they're constructed properly. They're not reliable when no thought is put into what the purpose of the survey is. It's not something you can spend 30 minutes designing and then say "well, that survey's done". It's got to be planned, and you need to collect data points that actually answer your questions, as I described in an earlier post.
See problem #1 above. But yeah you are right, we just have a problem of resources;
You know the old saying - garbage in, garbage out. It's important to ask the right questions to get value out of a survey.
I would put it this way... If you have resources and want a professional work, it means the world... If do it poorly, it means nothing :) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org