[ros-general] ReactOS case study

[Roman Hoegg]

Hello everybody!

My name is Roman Högg (RomanH) and I have occasionally posted to this 
mailing list and the web site forum in the past for a variety of reasons. 
(offering/asking for help, submitting the Swiss German keyboard layout, 
etc.) I now contact you for something completely different.

Together with the Helsinki School of Economics, Luleå University of 
Technology, Nokia and IBM Business Services, our institute ( 
http://www.mcm.unisg.ch ) is conducting a study called 
"Collabora-tion4Innovation (C4I)". The study is funded by the European 
Commission and is examining the im-pact of diversity within teams on 
factors such as innovation, creativity and productivity. By diversity we 
mean things like cultural diversity, different skills, different 
educational backgrounds, etc.

In the first phase of the project we are currently conducting a number of 
case studies from a variety of areas. The goal is to find the "state of 
the art" and later define areas in which further research is needed (e.g. 
organisational aspects such as process design, improving collaboration 
technologies, etc.) Since ReactOS is - as far as I can see - developed by 
a pretty diverse set of people (developers from different countries, 
probably with different skills and non-developers/users/testers that try 
to improve the software in whatever way they can) I wanted to ask whether 
it would be possible to conduct a "Reac-tOS Case Study". I think it would 
be nice to not only have companies in the case studies.  If you agree to 
this idea, I would like to conduct interviews with 2-3 persons of you (in 
English or German, most likely via phone). Each interview would last 
between 45 minutes and 1,5h maximum. (or I could send the 
questionnaire/interview guide in advance and we would only discuss the 
more open questions over the phone). After the interviews I would condense 
everything into a 3-4 page description of the project and the aspect of 
diversity. You would then get that text and could tell me whether you 
agree with it or whether I would have to change things. Nothing will be 
published without your consent! Unfortunately I can't offer you any money 
for the collaboration, but I think the study will give the project some 
additional promotion and, if you want to, you may of course use my text 
for documenta-tion purposes.

Please let me know what you think and thank you very much!!!

kind regards

Roman

------------------------------------------
Roman Högg
Research Assistant

=mcm institute 
for Media and Communications Management
University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
Blumenbergplatz 9, 9000 St. Gallen
Phone +41 (0)71 224 34 39
Mobile +41 (0)79 418 59 13
e-mail roman.hoegg at unisg.ch
http://www.mcm.unisg.ch
http://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/Personen/Roman_Hoegg