Lost my excitement

Firat,

I feel your pain (Translate: I know what you mean), I too feel a little less significant as the RoadTest membership has grown.  But as you know the element 14 website does offer more that road tests.  I only hoped that as the site knew, the communication to the membership would improve, as well as the reviews.  In some cases, the reviews have improved, but most remain about the same.  It would be interesting to see how many winners never file a review.  As to the membership communication, it started to get better, but then dropped almost completely off.  I do wish they would publish a winners list.  They haven't for the last 4 or 5 drawings.  Hang in there.

Gordon Margulieux

Salem, OR USA

Gordon,

Thanks for your valuable thoughts. I agree with all your comments. Yes, Element-14 website offers some free stuffs. Winner list is no more announced. User communication is almost done. There are few reviewes. I hope everything will get well soon.

Firat Kocak

I understand what you are saying, but obviously not everyone can be selected all the time. So yes, it will be far and few between if there are limited numbers of freebeis to hand out. I too wish there was a better winner notification as I missed out on one road test already. I was selected for one of the first ones but had no Idea and I didn't get my address back to them in a timely mannor.

However, those that do recieve a freebie needs to post a review. If not then that person needs to be taken off the list for any future handouts. After all, that is the whole point of giveing it away.

There are several reasons why a company may provide Element 14 with devices to Road Test, giving away free stuff is not one of them.

To me, Element 14 provides a manufacturer with a wide range of users/evaluaters for their new products.  An independent assessment is very important for them to gage if they have satisfied an industry need or just created a neater exising gadget.

Having worked in the industry longer than most of you have been around, I can say with confidence that some companies are astute enough to see the value of an independent review, good or bad, if just to get thier product noticed.

As a reviewer, you indeed have an obligation to verify that the product meets the specifications that came with it, provide insights as to how easy the product was to use, how well it supported its intended use, and any insights as to additional markets where the product might be used that the company had not initially considered.

Nothing is free!  If you belong to Road Test, then you have agreed to provide a valuable service for your "free" product.  Failing to provide a report deprives the company a return on thier investment, your fellow Element 14 collegues information about the product that you recieved, and reduces the chances that a company will offer Element 14 the opportunity to test future products.

So I advise all of you to think about the product being offered and assess if you can really provide valuable information back to the manufacturer in return for your opportunity to test it.

I like free stuff as much as the next person, but I joined Element 14 because it looked like a collection of true engineers who wanted to exchange information.  To me, that information is the most VALUABLE free product I can recieve by being a member.

Thanks for reading my opinion on this issue.

DAB

I agree totally with DAB, these road tests are a way for the companies to 'test the waters' with their products in an end user enviroment. I, for one, have just joined element 14 and the road test group and am looking forward to my first road test, hopefully with the mega 2560. I strongly agree that anyone selected for the road test should be ready to give a fully detailed review of the item they are sent, to test it in every aspect of it's abilities, check every spec as stated in the documentation and compare the factory specs with your results. i would really love to test out the new fluke road test, as i have done industrial maintenance for over 20 years and see alot of potential in the remote display and current hoop. the reason i haven't applied for it is because that now i am not in an industrial enviroment to fully test all the capabilities of the meter in various senarios as the meter is designed to do. as a long time fluke user, i would love to, but i know that i can't fully give a review for it as it should be given in my opinion. I feel that if anyone is selected for a road test, PLEASE give us a detailed review of the product, with as much information as possible.

Hi Everyone.

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts about the evolution of RoadTest. We are always looking for ways to improve our members' experience on element14, and RoadTest is big part of that. Normally, Alistair Winning would jump in here, but as I have sent him to a tradeshow for the next couple of days, I'd like to share some thoughts with you.

I can see how your odds of winning a product were higher before large numbers of people began discovering element14. The only way to increase them again would be to offer more simultaneous RoadTests, which is something we are planning to do this year. If you give us a little time to fix a couple of things with our internal processes, we should soon be able to increase the number and type of products we offer through RoadTest.

Completely agree with you about the importance of posting the winners' element14 screen names when each RoadTest is closed to further applicants. I'm not sure when or why this stopped, but we're going to start doing that again right away. Thank you for letting us know about this.

We've had some challenges in the past ensuring that RoadTest winners would actually post a product review-- once they have the unit, that sometimes would be the last we'd see of them. To address this, we recently implemented a better follow-up system in which we contact the product recipient a couple of times to ask how everything is going. This should result in more reviews per RoadTest-- and we completely agree that getting reliable reviews is one of things our members value most about RoadTest.

So please hold on to your excitement for just a little longer! Good changes are in store for RoadTest, and we want you guys to be a part of it. If you have any comments or questions, please post them here. Alistair will also join the conversation when he returns. He's going to be one of the main people leading improvements to RoadTest in the days ahead.

Thanks guys,

Sagar Jethani

Head of Content

element14

Sagar,

Thank you for the update.  I look forward to seeing what comes next.

Gordon Margulieux

Garmin AT - Salem, OR USA

Hi from sunny Germany,

Could you guys do me a favour. Could you look in the "Demonstration Board for Freescale MC9S08LL and MC9S08LH Families of MCUs" Roadtest and see if you can see the winners? If not could someone post a screenshot? The winners are meant to show automaytically, and this will let us know if we have a bug. If we have i will post the testers username manually from now on until we get it fixed.

Firat, as for your other point. I'm sorry but as the group has grown more popular the chanes of winning decrease for everyone. You were lucky you got in early and got to test a few kits. Hopefully you have more luck soon. Also, I been talking to our suppliers at Embedded World, and one especially was interested in a new  initiative.  I can't go public at the moment as discussions are still ongoing, but I'm sure you'll like it.  Instead of a random way of picking testers we will be actively seeking people

Ally

I can see there are 4 reviewers selected against the Freescale roadtest. Is there any other notification the roadtesters receive to inform them that they have won? Or does the item just turn up in the post one day?

Ally,

The winners for the "Demonstration Board for Freescale MC9S08LL and MC9S08LH Families of MCUs" are listed, but not for "Texas Instruments C2000 Digital Power Experimenter Kit (DPEK) and Blackhawk Emulator", "Freescale MMA845XQ Evaluation board and LFSTBUSB Accelerometer Interface Board" or "Microchip Multimedia Expansion Board" road tests.

Regards,

Gordon Margulieux

GArmin AT

Salem, OR USA