Re: Burrokeet presentation

Anil Ramnanan wrote:
> 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?
>>

...

> 
> I think that perhaps we should put less emphasis on the tool and more on 
> it's application. 

Very wise. So what is its application in the domain you are looking at?

or in Anil's original words...

> 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.

It is no good starting from the point of "here is a solution, now lets 
find the problem". If you don't have a clear understanding of a problem 
before you start then there is nothing to start. I find it quite strange 
that CIS seem to have had a meeting about how to present Burrokeet 
before even deciding what it is CIS are going to do with it.

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

OK, good, but isn't this where CIS were over 8 months ago? I was under 
the (mistaken) impression that the problem had already been identified 
and this meeting you were having was intended to show how Burrokeet was 
the solution.

> 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.

Can it be effectively used for website maintenance? Does it provide any 
benifit over something like Front Page or HomeSite? If it does then what 
is it? The answer to this last question identifies the real problem - 
which is why haven't the schools got websites already?

You may find they havn't got them because they don't need them.

> 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.

Do they have someone technical? Can Burrokeet be altered to mean they 
don't need that?

[Burrokeet develop hat on] It is a small step to making Burrokeet upload 
generated sites to FTP servers, the whole process can be automated. Note 
I say *can* be automated, it isn't now, but it can be with minimal 
effort (from someone technical). Is it worth CIS closing this gap by 
contributing that technical effort to the Burrokeet project?

[Burrokeet developer hat off] In other words, would the CIS Schools 
websites project have a more chance of success if this functionality was 
available in the solution provided? This should be part of the problem 
specification, not the solution specification.

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

Why?

Is this a CIS goal or a schools goal? You should be aiming at what the 
schools want today, not at what they *may* want tomorrow. As a Burrokeet 
developer I would love to see it being used in a more productive way 
than a website development tool, but is it right for the schools at this 
stage?

> What do you all think ?

I think CIS needs to clearly define a problem before wasting time 
deciding how to "sell" Burrokeet (or any other tool) to schools.

The process should be:

Problem identification -> solution identification -> plan -> people

CIS seem to be doing:

people -> solution -> problem -> plan

Spend time on the problem *before* spending time on the solution. I have 
to admit that I thought you already identified the problem, but it seems 
that Anil is trying to get agreement on that in this email, thus 
implying that it hasn't been done before.

Ross

Visit the CIS Project on the WWW:  http://www.cis.org.tt

View the offlist archives: http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.education.cis

-------------------------------------------------

Dgroups is a joint initiative of Bellanet, DFID, Hivos, ICA, IICD, OneWorld, UNAIDS and World Bank
--- You are currently subscribed to cis as: [email protected]
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-cis-221309I-T6/[email protected]