The Road Test program, is to me, an outstanding feature of Element 14. It is a well conceived and managed program with healthy membership numbers (4648 at date of writing with 4754 followers).
The healthy membership number is probably driven by the continuous stream of awesome products made available to the membership on a competitive basis for free in exchange for completing and posting an honest product review. Where else can you find this kind of a vendor sponsored test and evaluation program?
I am coming up on my 6th anniversary with the Element 14 community. While reflecting on this I began wondering about the history of the Road Test program. I am curious about the inception and growth of the program, and I'm not sure this information is readily available anywhere on the Element14 site.
Historical questions like the following come to mind:
Whose brainchild was this program?
What were the initial objectives and how was the program structure conceived?
How were vendors sold on the idea?
What do vendors get out of the program?
What was the first Road Test product?
Then there are the statistical questions that are of general interest:
How many products have been offered for Road Test?
How many applicants have there been?
How many vendors have participated?
What is the total retail value of product that has been disseminated to the community?
I am pretty sure that rscasny doesn't need any more work, so I am not asking to burden anyone at Element14 with the task of generating a history blog on the Road Test program.
For now, I'm just wondering if these questions are of interest to other members, and if other members have some of the answers. I'm also wondering if the answers have been gathered somewhere on the site already and I'm just not seeing through my own search ineptitude.
