Álvaro,
Check your email![:)]( "Smile")
For clarity, we operate several different levels of testing pre-release.
1) Special people... There is a very small list of two or three special people who we tend to communicate with directly quite early. They're special because they always reply and will try things out for you, they give useful feedback, without being overbearing or assuming they know better than everyone else! We always communicate with these people directly through email and respond to them quickly.
2) Special because of the product. Sometimes, we'll find or move to the front of the testing queue some people because of the thing they do... For example, a particular industrial customer that makes a product with CM4 and we've worked with in the past would get it early.
3) Alpha list. This is a curated list of people who have access to a special private forum, we invite people to this forum because we know them, or have been pointed to them. In general, they get here because they've proven themselves good at actually trying things out, also they are the people who answer lots of people's questions on the forums. They tend to not "be trolls" or "react to the trolls"! They have to sign an NDA or have a similar NDA in place for other reasons (approved resellers, design partners etc.)
Launch of a product will happen here:
4) Beta list. This is the private forum to which you can get access by filling in a form... These people tend to be self-selecting and interested in more software things. They are the people more likely to be affected by software changes which is why we release some of our software early through this interface. They don't sign an NDA so nothing that is communicated through there is "secret". This is one place where we identify individuals to move up to the alpha list. Mostly that's done by them communicating with us efficiently and effectively and in a way that is not confrontational (they have to work "with the engineers" not "versus the engineers").
In the end, almost nobody gets onto any of these levels through the contact-us page. We get something like 100 emails there a day and they have to be triaged by an admin staff member who often doesn't have technical knowledge. Soon after launching Pi 5 we stopped even forwarding those emails, because most of them were, "I do this thing can you send me a Pi 5". It's not that we don't value it, but it's really difficult to triage messages through that interface!
Check your email
For clarity, we operate several different levels of testing pre-release.
1) Special people... There is a very small list of two or three special people who we tend to communicate with directly quite early. They're special because they always reply and will try things out for you, they give useful feedback, without being overbearing or assuming they know better than everyone else! We always communicate with these people directly through email and respond to them quickly.
2) Special because of the product. Sometimes, we'll find or move to the front of the testing queue some people because of the thing they do... For example, a particular industrial customer that makes a product with CM4 and we've worked with in the past would get it early.
3) Alpha list. This is a curated list of people who have access to a special private forum, we invite people to this forum because we know them, or have been pointed to them. In general, they get here because they've proven themselves good at actually trying things out, also they are the people who answer lots of people's questions on the forums. They tend to not "be trolls" or "react to the trolls"! They have to sign an NDA or have a similar NDA in place for other reasons (approved resellers, design partners etc.)
Launch of a product will happen here:
4) Beta list. This is the private forum to which you can get access by filling in a form... These people tend to be self-selecting and interested in more software things. They are the people more likely to be affected by software changes which is why we release some of our software early through this interface. They don't sign an NDA so nothing that is communicated through there is "secret". This is one place where we identify individuals to move up to the alpha list. Mostly that's done by them communicating with us efficiently and effectively and in a way that is not confrontational (they have to work "with the engineers" not "versus the engineers").
In the end, almost nobody gets onto any of these levels through the contact-us page. We get something like 100 emails there a day and they have to be triaged by an admin staff member who often doesn't have technical knowledge. Soon after launching Pi 5 we stopped even forwarding those emails, because most of them were, "I do this thing can you send me a Pi 5". It's not that we don't value it, but it's really difficult to triage messages through that interface!
Statistics: Posted by gsh — Fri Jan 19, 2024 11:12 am