Dear Linux User Group Moderator:

I am a faculty member in the Jones school of management at Rice 
University
in Houston, Texas (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, and how communities
organized around products or brands are formed, from a sociological
perspective.

In this regard, LINUX user groups and mailing lists provide a wonderful
context to study these sociological issues.

We are conducting a survey of members of LINUX user groups/ mailing 
lists
seeking information on different elements of their thoughts, feelings, 
and
motivations of participating in such groups, and the value of the group 
to
them... The survey is available on the web at the following URL:

http://www.surveypro.com/cgi-bin/surveypro/run_survey.cgi?id=2444


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 $500 total 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 seek your help in conducting this research, first 
through
participating, and second, through encouraging your user group members 
to
participate in the research.. This will not take more than ten minutes 
of
your (and their time). Broad participation will increase the validity 
and
generalizability of our findings, making the research more useful.

We welcome all help, and look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,
Paul Dholakia
Assistant Professor
Rice University
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~dholakia