Evan, I'd say that there is very much a positive bias, considering I intended the survey only for people who /do/ pro bono work ;-)
It wasn't meant to compare the number of people who do versus the number of people who don't. It was meant to be a survey of how people are doing pro bono work in our profession. If you want, in the next survey I perform (where there will be some pretty decent swag as a prize, including a $110+ iPad case), I'll include a boolean question of whether or not the person performs pro bono work. I don't imagine the percent is very high (10%?), but the fact that I have 40+ responses is actually pretty awesome in my opinion. --Matt On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 5:28 PM, Evan Pettrey <[email protected]> wrote: > Matt, > > On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 5:14 PM, Matt Simmons < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi Phil, >> >> It's noteworthy that the given examples of professions that do a lot of >>> pro bono work are professions which are highly paid enough that people >>> can routinely be expected to afford to give some amount of their time >>> for pro bono. System administration, at the "pure sysadmin" level, >>> tends to not be so highly rewarded, and I'd hesitate to impose such >>> demands as part of professional society membership. >>> >>> >> I'm going to be releasing the results of the survey on my blog later >> this week (and I'll send a note on this thread, too), but I'm astounded at >> how many people are able to take time out of their schedule to put in even >> a couple of hours a week. I've had over 40 responses from people who posted >> very thoughtful answers and every single one of them has answered that >> working pro bono has made a difference. I'm really looking forward to >> letting everyone read the responses. >> > > I'm very encouraged by this and look forward to seeing the results. > However, the one thing I think you'd need to be careful with in regards to > the results are the bias. I'm not a statistician, but I'm sure there is > likely a term for what I'm thinking here...but what I'm wondering is that > if perhaps people who are most likely to respond to your survey are the > ones who have done/currently do pro bono work. > > While this may leave us with some great heartwarming stories and fantastic > anecdotes to share with others, it may give a skewed view of how much of > this pro bono work actually goes on in our industry. > > > In any case, I appreciate you doing the survey and look forward to seeing > the results. I care a lot about giving to the community so this is a > subject I'm very interested in. Thanks for taking the time to conduct this > survey. > > -Evan > > >> >> I don't think it's unreasonable at all to spend a little bit of time to >> find a group that can use your expertise, and then even just consult for >> them occasionally. Some people just go to dinner with a director at the >> firm, and others have mentioned joining the Board of Directors at the >> not-for-profit that they do pro bono work for. >> >> I can't tell you how happy I am that I left the answers as "paragraph >> text", because there are a lot of really heartwarming stories. >> >> --Matt >> -- >> LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? >> COOKIE MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss >> This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators >> http://lopsa.org/ >> >> > -- LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? COOKIE MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
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