<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font color="#222222" face="Arial"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Dear fellow energy modelers,</span></font></div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b style="font-family:Times;font-size:medium;font-weight:normal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"><br>
</span></b></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b style="font-family:Times;font-size:medium;font-weight:normal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">We (myself and more than 100 other modelers) want to make answers more accessible to the building energy modeling community. There are many venues (usually <b style="color:rgb(0,0,0);white-space:normal;font-family:Times;font-size:medium;font-weight:normal"><span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">forums or </span></b>mailing lists like this one) where modelers are already asking questions, but, though these services include an archive of all previous questions, answers, discussions, and announcements, they lack the organization and structure to make the knowledge base of answers easily accessible.</span></b></div>
<b style="color:rgb(34,34,34);background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:Times;font-size:medium;font-weight:normal"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"></span><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">The computer programming community has faced this same problem and has come up with a solution called </span><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/about" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">stackoverflow.com</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">, a website that focuses entirely on providing answers. The Stack Overflow platform relies on the community to up-vote good answers to increase the visibility for others who may ask the same question in the future. When others vote for your answers you gain "reputation points" that help establish your expertise in the community, which in turn provides a better incentive to provide answers even to the most beginner-level questions.</span><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"></span><br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">Since launching in 2008, Stack Overflow has been extremely successful: boasting 17 million unique visitors and 8.3 million answers! The success of Stack Overflow has led to </span><a href="http://stackexchange.com/sites" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">several other question and answer sites</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"> from </span><a href="http://photo.stackexchange.com/" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">photography</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"> to </span><a href="http://cooking.stackexchange.com/" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">cooking</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"> to </span><a href="http://judaism.stackexchange.com/" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">Jewish law</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">, all using the same platform as Stack Overflow and successfully supporting their respective communities.</span><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"></span><br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">We would like to do the same for the building energy modeling community, but before we can launch a fully functional site we need your help to prove that we have a large enough active community to support such a site and to help establish the scope of support the site will offer. This is the only requirement to use Stack Oveflow's platform; it is completely free and open to the public.</span><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"></span><br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">Please visit our proposal: </span><a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/45232/building-performance-simulation-analysis" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/45232/building-performance-simulation-analysis</span></a><br>
<a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/45232/building-performance-simulation-analysis" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"></span></a><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">If you'd like to support this effort you can do so by:</span><br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"></span><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">1. Joining the </span><a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/45232/building-performance-simulation-analysis" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">site</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"> (100+ followers and counting!)</span><a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/45232/building-performance-simulation-analysis" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"></span></a><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">2. Up-voting questions that help establish the scope of our community (We need 40 questions with 10+ votes to move to the next phase. Please consider voting for questions that do not yet have 10 votes!)</span><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">3. Proposing your own example questions</span><br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">4. Spreading the word to your friends and colleagues!</span><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"></span><br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">For further reading:</span><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">- Blog post at </span><a href="http://openrevit.com/" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">openrevit.com</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">: </span><a href="http://openrevit.com/2013/01/a-building-energy-performance-simulation-qa-site-that-will-change-your-life/" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">A Building Energy Performance Simulation Q&A site that will change your life!</span></a><br>
<span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">- How Stack Overflow works: </span><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/about" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">http://stackoverflow.com/about</span></a><br>
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com/about" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial"></span></a><br><span style="vertical-align:baseline;font-size:13px;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:Arial">Thank you!</span></b><div>
<font color="#222222" face="Arial"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font></div><div><font color="#222222" face="Arial"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"><br clear="all"></span></font><div><div style="text-align:left">
<span><font size="4">Neal Kruis</font></span></div><div style="text-align:left">828 482-2088</div><div><div style="text-align:left"><img src="http://bigladdersoftware.com/epx/logo_sm.png" width="96" height="37"><br></div>
<div style="text-align:center"></div><span><div style="text-align:left">Big Ladder Software</div></span><span><div style="text-align:left">2549 Irving Street</div></span><span><div style="text-align:left">Denver, CO 80211</div>
</span><div style="text-align:left"><a href="http://www.bigladdersoftware.com/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">http://www.bigladdersoftware.com</a></div></div></div>
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