Recently at GovLoop we’ve been scouring through our data and a lot of interesting findings about the community make up of GovLoop have come to light. In an effort to share our data with you (our members) we put together a sample video of GovLoopers by location. Let us know what you think.
The video below shows the GovLoop member population breakdown by state. Below the video you’ll find our data written out state by state in depth.
States with under 1% of the GovLoop population:
More than half the states hold less than 1% of the GovLoop population respectively. Those state are: North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming, Maine, Delaware, Rhode Island, Mississippi, Alaska, Idaho, Arkansas, Montana, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, West Virginia, Louisiana, Connecticut, Kentucky, Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin.
Ironically enough some of our most active users are represented in the states above. I won’t call out names (in fear of forgetting someone) but as a person that spends roughly 10 hours a day on GovLoop I’d venture a guess that 50% of our blog come from the states above.
Out of our top 30 cities on GovLoop the only two that come from these states: Albuquerque, New Mexico (20) and Madison Wisconsin (26)
States with 1% to 2% of the GovLoop population:
11 states fall into this category, making up a total of 13.4% of the GovLoop Community. These state are: Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Arizona, Oregon, Missouri, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and Minnesota.
In the last 12 months GovLoop has held events in 3 of these states (we’re counting our Kansas City even twice… it was literally 2 minutes outside Kansas): Kansas City and Huntsville, AL. GovLoop also has a close connection with Minnesota having our parent company GovDelivery based out of that state.
Out of our top 30 cities these states have 6: Portland, Oregon (15) Kansas City, Missouri (19) Indianapolis, Indiana (21) Phoenix, Arizona (24) Columbus, Ohio (29) Saint Louis, Missouri (30)
States with 2% to 4% of the GovLoop population:
There are 8 states in this category and they make up 15.4% of GovLoop members. These states are: North Carolina, Illinois, Massachusetts, Colorado, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Washington and Florida.
In the last 12 months GovLoop has held an event in all but one of these states with Georgia being the outlier. Two of these states are home offices for two members of GovLoop staff with Andy K working for North Carolina and Mr. GovLoop himself working from the sunshine state of the Florida.
Out of our top 30 cities 8 are represented here: Atlanta, Georgia (4) Chicago, Illinois (5) Denver, Colorado (7) Seattle, Washington (8) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (10) Boston, Massachusetts (12) Raleigh, North Carolina (17) Olympia, Washington (18)
States with greater than 4% of the GovLoop population:
5 states plus the District of Columbia are what make up this remaining group which constitutes more than 50% of GovLoop. Those states are: New York, Texas, California, Maryland and Virginia.
In the last 12 months GovLoop has held an event in every one of these states and is currently holding an event in California as I type. Of course of offices are located in DC and along with the high concentration of feds in these areas the breakdown makes sense.
Of out Top 30 Cities : Washington, DC (1) New York, New York (2) San Francisco, California (3) Austin, Texas (6) San Diego, California (9) Houston, Texas (11) Baltimore, Maryland (13) Los Angeles, California (14) Sacramento, California (16) Albany, New York (22) Columbia, Maryland (23) Dallas, Texas (25) San Antonio, Texas (27) Richmond, Virginia (28)
Let us know if you found this interesting and if you liked the format. We are working to present more data and would like your input on how it’s packaged.
Happy to be one of twenty from Albuquerque!
A static presentation with font sizes proportionate to percentages (i.e., a geographical word cloud), perhaps with color coding of text or states as well), would get the message across quicker, eh?
What a waste of bandwidth.
Hm, I can’t see the map (probably my work internet blocking it) which is a pity. Would be fun to see how many International members (like me!) you have too and where they are 🙂
Just adding my request for International stats too 🙂
The video was kind of fun, but I was a bit perplexed by the emphasis on percentages rather than numbers. .3%, for example, doesn’t have the same informational value as 148. I also found the text description of the percentages hard to follow.
Given what you chose to focus on, I think a simple table could have done the trick (i.e., state, number of members, percentage of membership) – and it would have been a lot simpler to produce and share. You could have done a similar table for cities, including a column for visits. I also like the word cloud suggestion.
I am doing something similar with the Global Center for Digital Era Leadership (GCDEL), and I think it’s turning out to be a pretty neat snapshot of “where are we?” I have a Members page on the website, which has a Google Map embedded in it. And one of the best things about it is that it’s fairly easy to update and therefore always current. It’s also somewhat interactive… Here’s a link: http://www.gcdel.org/members.html.
One last thought: what do you hope to gain through reviewing/sharing this information? What kind of call to action do you want to inspire? I can see lots of possibilities, and I’d encourage you to think in those terms for future efforts. You touch on some of the “why” and “now what” in this post, but I think the analytical and action-oriented aspects can be stronger.
Hope this helps.