A short time ago, we asked for opinions on a meeting/conference and we are happy to share the results of that. Some of which surprised us.

The first thing we asked was is a meeting was even wanted, seems obvious we know but we had to ask...

As you can see, it was a resounding yes with no votes at all for no, which did surprise us.

Next was, what day was best...

Surprisingly the Friday/Saturday thing we've been doing seems to be the most popular by some margin with only a midweek event coming close to that but, not close enough to justify a change.

This one, we really weren't sure how it'd go as whenever this topic comes up, the answers we get tend to be all over the place, and hopefully this demonstrates to everyone what we mean when we say that to you. Put simply, it's impossible to please all the people, all the time so we have to do what suits (or can be made to work) for the majority of people.

With that said, it is pretty clear that May and September are the clear favourites here.

We're going to skip a coiuple now as they've no real bearing other than for our own interest, the big one that we get a bit of flak about is using Yarnfield as a venue.

Overwhelmingly, as you can see, Yarnfield is liked by members. 

We know this as we get a lot of members praising the venue for its location, value and no-nonsense approach. It is a very unpretentious venue that has a focus on training and meetings, which is what we want.

The food is okay, the accommodations and bar are cheap if nothing fancy, but for what we do, it works great.

The criticisms that we get tend to come from people who are using a company expense account, so cost isn't so much an issue for them. For sole traders and small companies that are our members, cost is a huge factor, and we must respect that.

Whilst most of the results were not exactly shocking to us, there are a few surprises, but overall, this has been very helpful in showing that what we do and where we do it is probably the best compromise to suit as many people as possible.

Now all we need to do is crack on and get the next one organised...