-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 This came to me and piqued my interest. Someone is actually doing a study about Linux User Groups. It looks legitimate. I took the survey in less than 10 minutes. I encourage you to take it too. Of course, I recommend that you put PLUG in as the name of the group who you would like to receive ther $100 stipend, if selected. - ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Hallo, and a request => Please help Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2002 15:04:50 -0500 (CDT) From: "Utpal M. Dholakia" Hi folks: I am a faculty member in the Jones school of management at Rice University in Houston (this may be verified using a Google search with "Paul Dholakia", or "Utpal Dholakia"). We are conducting an academic research project, studying social interactions online more generally, and specifically how communities organized around products or brands are formed, from a sociological perspective. In this regard, we are conducting a survey of people who belong to internet-based LINUX groups such as mailing lists, websites etc. seeking information on different elements of their thoughts, feelings, and motivations of participating in such groups, and the value of the group to them... In this context, the members of your LUG would be a very attractive group of target respondents. Your group is especially attractive since it is large, broad-based and this might give exposure of our survey to many different types of Linux users, with varying levels of skills, interests, etc. Our survey is available on the web at the following URL: http://www.surveypro.com/cgi-bin/surveypro/run_survey.cgi?id=2444 Please note that the survey is targeted especially at those individuals who interact with the more-or-less same group of individuals online within the mailing list (as in your case) or on some other online forum (more generally), that is, those who have online friends that they interact with regularly. Of course, this research is strictly academic, and has no commercial links or interests whatsoever. We hope to publish this research in a sociology journal. As a small token of our appreciation for participants' time, and in the spirit of the philosophy underlying the open-source movement, we will donate a total of $500 to the five favorite organizations/ groups of our participants' choice (we ask the participant's to nominate their favorite groups in the survey). I am writing to you to see if members of your chapter might be interested in helping us out by participating in the survey. Of course, I also invite you personally to participate as well if you have the time. Please note that I am extremely sensitive to netiquette issues, and apologize for any intrusion. I am emailing moderators of several Linux-related lists to make similar requests, so if you moderate multiple linux-related groups or email lists, and receive more than one message from me, I again sincerely apologize. I want to minimize this kind of inconvenience as much as possible. If you do consider it appropriate, it would be wonderful if you could forward an abridged version of this message to your LUG members suggesting (or even better, encouraging) participation in our research. Please feel free to post only the relevant portion of this message, to make any changes, and to add any personal comments you might have to this message, should you choose to post it. Also, I am not a Linux expert. Consequently, I would especially welcome any suggestions that you might have about other groups or organizations that you may be aware of, that might be suitable to approach for conducting this type of research, and who might be interested in participating. Of course, it goes without saying that broad participation and a large sample size will increase the validity and generalizability of our findings, making our research more useful. We welcome all help. Please let me know if I can answer any questions. I sincerely hope you can support our research. Best wishes, Paul Dholakia - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Paul Dholakia Assistant Professor of Management Rice University 314 Herring Hall - MS 531 6100 Main Street Houston TX 77005-1892 Tel: 713-348-5376 Fax: 713-348-5251 http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~dholakia - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- - ------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBPLjarCsk3ywszI1FEQJ50gCfe2zCudmE/yDHs7iEQKiXjTvS6/kAn0jr PS9ScHgZf4Cy8s2ON5QDW98L =GXmn -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----