Autonomy Bay Area Clients More Optimistic Than NY's: Why?

High-flying software vendor Autonomy recently held two big customer events in New York and two in the Bay Area. At each of the four events, Autonomy surveyed its clients with a consistent set of five questions. The results reveal a striking difference in attitudes about whether this is the time to hunker down and slash costs, or get aggressive and reach for more market share.In both sets of events, the Bay Area crew showed a much greater eagerness to defy the downturn by increasing business activity, expanding into new practice areas, and grabbing for more market share: by 38% to 22% at the Web Solutions events, and by 32% to 14% at the Legal Market event.

Here are the five questions Autonomy asked at each of the four events: "In the current economic climate are you: A. Hunkering down and conserving costs? B. Planning for the upturn? C. Hiding and hoping no one notices? D. Increasing activity as these are the times where market share is won? E. No change, business as usual"

Here are the results from the Autonomy Interwoven Web Solutions events in Palo Alto and New York: --Hunkering down: 25% in Palo Alto, 25% in New York --Planning for the upturn: 19% in Palo Alto, 20% in New York --Hiding: 0% in each cities --Increasing activity: 38% in Palo Alto, 22% in New York --No change: 18% in Palo Alto, 32% in New York

And here are the results from the Autonomy iManage Legal Market events in San Francisco and New York: --Hunkering down: 40% in San Francisco, 56% in New York --Gearing up for upturn: 11% in San Francisco, 13% in New York --Hiding: 4% in each city --Expanding into new practice areas in the downturn: 32% in San Francisco, 14% in New York --No change: 14% in San Francisco, 13% in New York

So why is this happening - is it a baseball thing? Not very likely - each region has one team at .500, and one floundering below .500. Maybe the weather? Something in the water? Whaddaya think?