Re: Burrokeet presentation

Allan Samaroo wrote:

>There was an initial gathering of a few CIS members and guests yesterday to
>begin looking at ways to present the burrokeet to a non-IT audience.
>Unfortunately I couldn't stay as I had an impromptu meeting that same night.
>
>How did things transpire after I left?
>
>Allan.
>
>  
>
Our discussion went basically along the lines of trying to make 
Burrokeet more appealing to the non-it group. If Burrokeet is to be 
presented to an non-IT audience then it has to be presented in a way 
that will place the emphasis less on the technical aspects of Burrokeet 
itself and more on how it would help them. As Allan pointed out, we can 
become too technical with the presentations. We need to become much less 
technical with it, especially when dealing with people who are not 
familiar with such systems. Feedback from non IT people is critical in 
this area.

I think that perhaps we should put less emphasis on the tool and more on 
it's application. I don't want it to sound like we are using Burrokeet 
just for the sake of using it. While using Burrokeet is an important 
aspect of the project to me, it should only be done when it can provide 
a solution to a problem. We should approach it from the standpoint of 
identifying a problem that needs to be solved and then proposing a way 
of employing Burrokeet to solve it.

In terms of a secondary school, I believe we should focus on something 
simple at first. After the discussion, I think that the most important 
point that came out was the fact that the schools would want something 
that would involve as little work on their part as possible. With this 
in mind, we need to find a problem that we can solve with Burrokeet that 
will not involve too much work that they might be scared off.

I think that the school website is well suited to this. There are a 
number of reasons for this.  

First of all, it is simple. It is much less complex than trying to 
convince them that they can use Burrokeet to do things like deliver 
courses and learning material.

Secondly, it is something that they need. They have been trying to get a 
website going for the longest while. While Burrokeet was originally 
designed as a Learning Content Management System, it can easily be 
applied to maintaining their website.

Thirdly, this application involved a minimal amount of work from the 
students and staff.  To add content to the site, their students only 
need to know how to type a document up in Word or OpenOffice. They only 
need a single technical person that will be able to put the site 
together in Burrokeet and publish it.

Once we get them to do this, then they can explore the other features of 
Burrokeet and find their own applications for it.

What do you all think ?

Anil



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