[Radiance-general] Radiance feedback-form now online

[Peter Apian-Bennewitz]

Dear coworkers,

hope you all got through the wintertime holiday period well !

Those of you already back at the PC, - you could be the first to try the
new online feedback form at

    http://www.radiance-online.org/survey1/

My motivation for it was to get more info on the Radiance community,
especially from the silent majority of users who read the mailing list,
use Radiance and may have some views and ideas just below their level of
active posting to the list.
E.g.: There's got to be a couple of students at Universities worldwide
who are confronted with Radiance each course and from which we never
hear. Especially when they _don't_ liked it.
Likewise there are probably consultants using Radiance, whose opinion is
valuable and should influence Radiance future.

Whether the idea works out, depends on your input. Which in turn may
give the folks at the research labs and universities some indication as
to what is needed next.
The number of questions is kept at a minimum (8) and the answers are
selectable multiple choice. So the entry is fast and further more, it's
anonymous.

The whole thing is planned to be used continuously over the next years,
rather than being a one-time snapshot. The current state of the survey
is listed on a second webpage, so anyone can monitor its progress.

Technically each entry is stored in a MySQL database, together with a
time stamp and the client IP number. The latter is handy in case some
bored bad guy on the Internet floods the entry form, otherwise it won't
be made public. The time stamp allows for analysis over the next years,
while the database structure allows for correlations like "what do
architects see as missing".

a happy start into 2005 to all of you

-Peter Apian-Bennewitz