The first ever GMOD Community Survey was conducted in the last half of October 2008. Almost 100 people participated in the survey, providing feedback and suggestions on everything from GMOD Components to GMOD Meetings to hardware to research interests.
This survey provides the first comprehensive view of the GMOD user community, what it is using and happy with, as well as what needs improvement and what priorities for the future are.
Note: See the 2009 GMOD Community Survey for the following year’s survey, which focused on genome and comparative genomics visualization.
Highlights of the survey are on this page. The complete report summarizing all multiple choice questions and free text answers is also available.
To see the detailed section for any question in the survey, click on the link in this list.
The survey asked participants which GMOD Components they used. Here were the most popular responses:
% Using | Component |
---|---|
70.8% | <a href=”../extras/2008GMODCommunitySurvey.html#GBrowse” |
class=”external text” rel=”nofollow”>GBrowse</a> | |
36.0% | <a href=”../extras/2008GMODCommunitySurvey.html#Chado” |
class=”external text” rel=”nofollow”>Chado</a> | |
30.3% | <a href=”../extras/2008GMODCommunitySurvey.html#Apollo” |
class=”external text” rel=”nofollow”>Apollo</a> | |
21.3% | <a href=”../extras/2008GMODCommunitySurvey.html#BioMart” |
class=”external text” rel=”nofollow”>BioMart</a> | |
13.5% | <a href=”../extras/2008GMODCommunitySurvey.html#Pathway_Tools” |
class=”external text” rel=”nofollow”>Pathway Tools</a> | |
10.1% | <a href=”../extras/2008GMODCommunitySurvey.html#CMap” |
class=”external text” rel=”nofollow”>CMap</a> | |
10.1% | <a href=”../extras/2008GMODCommunitySurvey.html#GMODTools” |
class=”external text” rel=”nofollow”>GMODTools</a> | |
10.1% | <a href=”../extras/2008GMODCommunitySurvey.html#InterMine” |
class=”external text” rel=”nofollow”>InterMine</a> |
From the 89 responses we received, how often are the 5 most popular components used at the same site? The cutoff for inclusion in the table was 9 responses.
Components and Combinations | # Responses | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
GBrowse | 63 | ||||
Chado | 32 | ||||
Apollo | 27 | ||||
Chado | GBrowse | 25 | |||
Apollo | GBrowse | 22 | |||
Apollo | Chado | 21 | |||
BioMart | 19 | ||||
Apollo | Chado | GBrowse | 18 | ||
BioMart | GBrowse | 18 | |||
Pathway Tools | 12 | ||||
GBrowse | Pathway Tools | 11 | |||
Apollo | BioMart | 10 | |||
Apollo | BioMart | GBrowse | 9 | ||
BioMart | Chado | 9 |
The survey also asked several questions about the servers GMOD components are running on.
See Computing Requirements for recommendations.
Operating systems in use had a definite skew towards Unix based systems:
# Responses | Operating System |
---|---|
55 | Linux |
8 | Mac OS X |
6 | Solaris |
2 | Windows |
1 | Unspecified Unix |
We also asked users to describe their current server hardware (not summarized here, but available in the survey), and whether or not their servers were sufficient to meet their current needs. Responses to the latter question are summarized here.
# Responses | Answer |
---|---|
~30 | Sufficient (at least for now) |
8 | Need more memory |
8 | Faster/More CPUs/Servers |
5 | Faster/More disk |
The survey included a section on GMOD Meetings.
See Meetings for a summary of past and upcoming meetings.
The survey asked several questions about the project overall.
There were 59 responses to the question:
What aspects of the GMOD project are you most satisfied with?
Popular responses were:
# Responses | Aspect / Component |
---|---|
23 | GBrowse |
17 | Support and active community |
8 | Chado |
8 | Software tools quality, maintenance, breadth and functionality |
6 | Open Source |
6 | Apollo |
There were 44 responses to the question:
What aspects of the GMOD project are you least satisfied with?
Recurring responses were:
# Responses | Aspect / Component |
---|---|
14 | Documentation |
8 | Chado |
7 | Difficult configuration and installation |
5 | Integration and coordination |
3 | None |
There were 47 responses to the question:
What would you like to see GMOD work on in the next 12 to 18 months?
Recurring responses were:
# Responses | Task |
---|---|
18 | Documentation |
14 | Integration |
11 | GBrowse: testing, speed, Web 2.0, glyph documentation, features |
5 | Chado: Chado: PostgreSQL 8.3 support, phenotypes, integration with Apollo, functional annotation |
3 | Training |
3 | Improve what we already have. |
The survey asked several questions about the GMOD Help Desk.
Questions asked included:
The question:
Please rank what the priorities of the Help Desk should be.
resulted in this priority ranking for these 5 areas:
Note: We are moving forward with plans to hold a GMOD Course in Oxford, UK in 2009. Watch the website for details.
21 respondents were definitely or probably interested in attending a GMOD course in Asia/Pacific in 2009.
When asked what locations respondents could make it to, these locations had more than one response:
# Responses | Location |
---|---|
5 | Austrailia |
5 | China |
3 | Japan |
3 | Singapore |
2 | India |
Note: We will investigate possible locations and interest in a GMOD Course in Asia/Pacific during the last half of 2009 and during 2010.
The survey a number of questions about survey respondents and their organizations.
Questions included:
80 participants answered the question:
Do you consider yourself to be a GMOD user, GMOD Developer, or both?
# Responses | Response |
---|---|
35 | User |
6 | Developer |
34 | Both |
5 | Other |
Finally, the survey asked:
Please indicate what types of biological data your database/website is about or that you are interested in now or in the near future, and that you are planning or hoping to use GMOD to manage, visualize, or annotate.
Respondents were given a list of choices along with Other
# Responses | Interest |
---|---|
51 | Assembled sequence |
48 | Comparative Genomics |
43 | Manual genome annotation |
39 | Next generation sequence |
38 | Annotation pipelines |
32 | Community annotation |
29 | Microarrays |
29 | Ontologies |
24 | Mapping (genetic, physical, QTL, …) |
22 | Phenotypes |
20 | Pathways |
19 | Literature curation |
18 | Other expression (besides microarrays) |
18 | Workflow / Integration |
13 | Lines / Stocks |
13 | Population genomics |
10 | Phylogeny |
6 | Community directory |
6 | Other |
4 | Anatomy |
Responses under Other included: