Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 10:01 am Post subject: Changes in Europe?
Interestingly, over the last few months we have noticed a very surprising trend: Euro and British Pound donations have dropped in half. Meanwhile, U.S. dollar donations have remained level.
I would not be surprised if the drop is due to a worsening economy throughout Europe. We saw the reverse happen last year when U.S. dollar donations dropped rapidly in early 2009 only to slow recover by the end that same year.
But maybe the significant drop is a sign of a different trend? In my limited experience, it seems that technology trends generally move first through Asia, then Europe, and then North America.
Anyone have any thoughts or opinions on this trend? We definitely want to make sure that we produce a product that is useful to our donors and if you think we are missing an obvious new trend, let us know.
Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 12:09 pm Post subject: Re: Changes in Europe?
pluby wrote:
Interestingly, over the last few months we have noticed a very surprising trend: Euro and British Pound donations have dropped in half. Meanwhile, U.S. dollar donations have remained level.
It's not clear to me from what you've said whether this means the "size of the donations denominated in said currency" or "the number of donations that are denominated in said currency" or "the value in USD of donations that were made in Euros/pounds" or something else entirely, or a combination thereof.
I was talking about actual Euro and British Pound donations, not their U.S. dollar equivalent.
In other words, European users are donating significantly less in quantity of their own currency compared to last year. While the declining exchange rate against the U.S. dollar is an additional factor that reduces the value of European donations, the raw reduction in European donations is twice as big as the currency exchange rate decline.
I'm curious - if the US level remained steady in terms of the overall amount, is that the same number of people donating the same as before, or is it gradually more people (i.e. a constant rise in users), but donating less each?
There's definitely a sense of belt-tightening going on over here in Europe. Prices rising, jobs falling, euro bailouts, blah blah.
I'm curious - if the US level remained steady in terms of the overall amount, is that the same number of people donating the same as before, or is it gradually more people (i.e. a constant rise in users), but donating less each?
My rough analysis tells me that the number of people donating in U.S. is the same or shrinking. In other words, the size of the donation is constant. I only mention that the number of people may be shrinking is because NeoOffice 3.1.1 has only been out for 3 weeks and we are already seeing a dropoff in donations. It may be a seasonal fluke since we are entering summer and summer is always a low donation time even in the U.S.
yoxi wrote:
There's definitely a sense of belt-tightening going on over here in Europe. Prices rising, jobs falling, euro bailouts, blah blah.
BTW, I forgot to mention in my original post that if we think the drop in European donations is due to the economy, then that is something we can handle.
My main concern is that our users' workflow is changing and NeoOffice does not fit in the new workflow. One step we have done to try and adapt to a more mobile world is NeoOffice Mobile.
I guess maybe I am really trying to start a discussion of where we should be targeting development. NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org are now pretty mature products but I sense that they are still focussed on being an Office 2004 knock off.
Well, the OOo UI is getting long in the tooth. And project Renaissance is moving much more slowly than I would like.
It is not so much the eye candy of a more modern office suite that I am looking for, but the smoothness in UI experience. I am even moderately interested in Office 2011, after being really annoyed with Office 2008. Of course, this is an enormous project.
I honestly can't think of what NeoOffice needs badly. I wonder how many people actually use Microsoft's on-line collaboration tools..
Perhaps we should start an open forum (also for non-subscribers) and ask everyone to post their top 3 fault, shortcomings and pet peeves with NeoOffice?
Best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
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