Lost my excitement

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

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

Hi,

I would like to thank for the valuable comments and updated information. But, first of all, i want to make clear the purpose which i intended while i was writing the first message;

First, i have never thought to be the one selected in each Roadtest. There were Roadtest which i did not attend since either i had the Roadtested product or i did not interest in it. I am indicating this for i do not desire to be misunderstood.

Second, why did i say "I have lost my excitement" ? I said this because i was feeling like that while i wrote the message. It would be unfortunate to limit my feelings to just only not being a winner. It is just a small part of it. The big reason of it is that i was not only visiting the Roadtest group for enrolling myself but also reading Reviews and comments to reviewes plus user questions posted under this section. But i can not see reviewes any more as usual. Almost none. Just a few, that is all.

So, this made me some disappointed. Thus, i started to visit the group less than normal that i do as usual. In the meantime, not seing the winners list also caused to cease my interest to the group. Alistair, so much sorry that i did not know the winners list were being published in the Enroll box. In the past, i was used to see the winner list as in a different message. My mistake, sorry again.

Every member in this group has equal rights and can be awinner for any of the Roadtests. Yet, winners should be encouraged to post their reviews. This is my opinion, though.

By the way, unfortunately, i am not receiving group events andupdates any more. For example, when a new Roadttest started, i only know it while i was visiting E14 main page for the new messages. I see roadtest section has a new picture which presents a new Roadtested product. Sometimes, Roadtest section updates its picture components a bit late, i enroll myself after a new Roadtest has started for a few days. Maybe this is the reason that Alistair updated the winners list under Enroll box but i did not know this since i did not receive any event message.

Alistair, as for your updated information, it looks very nice and i will be impaitently waiting for the discussions you made come to a decision and making the result public.

Cheers all,

Firat