Would You Be Interested in Roadtesting KiCad EDA?

I think it is more suitable to Design Challenge or special Project14. My idea is following:

first phase (1.5 months): design part, everyone create design in KiCad, share project using public blog in dedicated section. Mandatory parts for sharing are ZIP containing KiCad 7.X Project, ZIP containing exported Gerbers and BOM tables with links to Farnell/Newark. Other members can review his design and autor can update project within 1.5 month period to fix all bugs find by other members and possibly improve design by other members suggestions. This reduces need to produce multiple PCBs as part of contest. Up to 4-layer 100x100mm PCBs would be allowed for participating in contest. This should fit cheep PCB productions. PCBs outside these restrictions can join competition as non-sponsored.

second phase (0.5 months + manufacturing/shipping time): element14 will selected top X (for example 10) projects. Author of these projects later receive 5pcs of their PCB (manufactured according to gerbers attached to first blog) and up to 100 USD Newark/Farnell basket (according to BOM table present in first blog).

third phase 1 month: contestants assemble their PCB and write final blog about it comparing 3D view in KiCad with reality as well as description of project and results evaluation.

You need sponsors for PCBs: For example JLCPCB sponsor lot of youtube videos. I think they would be interested.

You need sponsors for Farnell/Newark baskets: Most probably you will need to pay it by Element14 budget or find someone else (KiCad foundation or something like this)?

In case of success this project I think EAGLE competitors (Altium, Cadence, ...) will be interesting in sponsoring similar contest featuring their products also.

I think it is more suitable to Design Challenge or special Project14. My idea is following:

first phase (1.5 months): design part, everyone create design in KiCad, share project using public blog in dedicated section. Mandatory parts for sharing are ZIP containing KiCad 7.X Project, ZIP containing exported Gerbers and BOM tables with links to Farnell/Newark. Other members can review his design and autor can update project within 1.5 month period to fix all bugs find by other members and possibly improve design by other members suggestions. This reduces need to produce multiple PCBs as part of contest. Up to 4-layer 100x100mm PCBs would be allowed for participating in contest. This should fit cheep PCB productions. PCBs outside these restrictions can join competition as non-sponsored.

second phase (0.5 months + manufacturing/shipping time): element14 will selected top X (for example 10) projects. Author of these projects later receive 5pcs of their PCB (manufactured according to gerbers attached to first blog) and up to 100 USD Newark/Farnell basket (according to BOM table present in first blog).

third phase 1 month: contestants assemble their PCB and write final blog about it comparing 3D view in KiCad with reality as well as description of project and results evaluation.

You need sponsors for PCBs: For example JLCPCB sponsor lot of youtube videos. I think they would be interested.

You need sponsors for Farnell/Newark baskets: Most probably you will need to pay it by Element14 budget or find someone else (KiCad foundation or something like this)?

In case of success this project I think EAGLE competitors (Altium, Cadence, ...) will be interesting in sponsoring similar contest featuring their products also.

And I forged final step: 1 or 2 best KiCad designs and assembled boards (final blogs) will be graded by some big prize as known from other design challenges.

Note that similar contest was running last year on "Element14 competitior" site and sponsored by PCB manufacturer: https://www.electromaker.io/contest/eurocircuits-pcb-2022

I suspect Design Challenges are intensive work, whereas Project14 is a lot lighter touch to support. It's a lot of effort to ship low-cost boards, so it might be better for any applicant to just swallow the cost themselves, since it's not a lot even for 4-layer, or an alu PCB. The few times I've had to ship stuff to customers, it's always been stressful, so anything that reduces that could be attractive I reckon.

A RoadTest has the benefit that the applicant may focus more on the subject (KiCad), whereas many Design Challenges cover all sorts of other stuff over several months, like PCB assembly and construction, which, while interesting, wouldn't help someone interested in knowing about KiCad (unless there were errors in what was desired compared to what KiCad generated).

KiCad is great for hobbyists and perhaps small and medium sized businesses, but does not have the higher-end enterprise-friendly features, so I don't think it competes with Cadence and similar CAD. Altium is a weird one, since it is more for small and medium-sized orgs from what I can tell, since CircuitStudio was their half-hearted (and not well disguised) effort encourage users to full Altium through lack of CircuitStudio support and updates, which was disingenuous I feel. I'll always have a soft spot for EAGLE since I spent so much time with it, and really like it, but wouldn't go back. There are other CAD packages but it's clear that the decent manufacturers have abandoned the small user and hobbyist, presumably because they feel it's unnecessary. If anyone requires enterprise or extensive support then they simply expect them to pay for it, and they will give training (paid or free at their discretion).

All the above is just a opinion, I could be totally wrong,, so please treat with a pinch of salt.

I agree with all that you wrote. PCB design is naturaly multi-stage process and while we are focusing on design stage (KiCad) we simply cannot remove other steps (ordering, manufacturing, assembly) from this process and no matter of activity form factor, it will always influence the KiCad review somehow except the case that someone just want to use KiCad and do not build the PCB designed in it.