(This post was originally published at yougi.org)
Since its first execution, in January 2011, Yougi has been helping CEJUG to manage its membership process and events. Yougi has collected a lot of valuable data in the last 2.5 years and it is urging now to explore all possibilities of data analysis. Some relevant analysis have been done and we aim to discuss them now.
The figure below depicts two charts generated by Yougi to show the membership growth during the current year while comparing it with the previous year. The intention of the chart is not to show the total number of members, but the growth throughout the year, taking into consideration only data collected in that period.
By comparing real events with these charts CEJUG could understand what was actually happening and make decisions based on that. At the beginning of 2012 the group was very active, with many events and participation. However, activities felt down throughout the year after a crises in the leadership team. It impacted the group’s attractiveness reducing the number of new members. At the beginning of 2013, CEJUG went through a major leadership change and general reorganisation, resulting in concrete growth in the latests months of 2013.
Thanks to the latest events and projects supported by CEJUG, the group is on pace to surpass the year 2012 in number of registrations. The last three months have been higher than last year’s results for the same period. If this pattern of growth persists in the next six months, CEJUG will have a lot to celebrate at the end of 2013.
Data shows that events are what really makes the difference, because it was exactly during the months of April, June and May that events took place in 2013. The same phenomenon can be observed in 2012, where major events were held in February, March and May.
With time, it gets harder to overcome previous years because there is a limited amount of programmers in the region covered by CEJUG. But there is always a lot of factors that may ensure continued growth. We are going to list three:
- Market growth: When the IT market grows, it attracts more professionals and some of these professionals are Java developers. To attract these people, CEJUG can organize events within companies.
- New Students in Computer Science: Every year, hundreds of young people choose computer science as their future carrier. CEJUG already collaborates a lot with local universities, although this collaboration can be further enhanced.
- Nationalisation of the group: CEJUG already has a considerable number of non-local members, showing that it has a good level of attractiveness. Therefore, CEJUG has potential to become a national community, representing Brazil in several international initiatives.
These factors could help to organize CEJUG’s actions to ensure good results in 2014.
