UniForum Members: Who Are You?

Statistics show what members do,
where they live

By Susan J. Hoffmann

Is there such a thing as a typical UniForum member? Maybe. We do keep a certain amount of data on our members, so we have a picture of who we are talking to when we send you information about the comings and goings in the world of open systems.

Because you may want to know, I thought I'd share some of the data about you and your fellow UniForum members. I've based my findings on fully paid UniForum general members. UniForum also has a large number of trial associate members in our database from the annual UniForum Trade Show and other programs, but the data on them is not as detailed, so I didn't include them at this time.

First of all, 84 percent or almost 5,000 UniForum members are located in the United States. Our international contingent is about 12 percent or about 550. The remaining four percent are located in Canada and Mexico.

It gets even more interesting when we start looking at what you do. Unsurprisingly, 26 percent of you work in engineering, project or program management, systems administration, or a software-related position. An additional 24 percent of UniForum members are in a managerial, department head, or supervisory role.

One thing that may surprise you about UniForum members is that 12 percent of them fall into what I call the "chief executive" category. These people hold the title of president, partner, principal, owner, executive director, or chairman/CEO. Another eight percent rank right below that group with titles of vice president, CIO, general manager, CFO, or controller. That's 20 percent! Remember that statistic the next time you place your UniForum recruitment advertisement.

Department directors make up an additional 11 percent of the overall membership total, so you can see why we try to cover issues that relate to this particular market segment.

My personal favorite of the statistics that I can pull from the database is the male to female ratio. I'm sure no one is surprised that 80 percent of the members (4,200+) are male. But at least 12 percent, or almost 650, are female. And that number has been slowly rising for each year that I've been at UniForum.

So if there is such a thing as a "typical UniForum member," it's a male, working in engineering, located in the United States. However, I daresay that the UniForum members I have met-and I have met a lot of you-are anything but typical!

Susan J. Hoffmann is the membership services manager for UniForum.