[a2t] Re: Meeting at Sight Village 2008 & group future
- From: "Steve Dryden" <csdryden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <a2t@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:52:37 +0100
MessageHello Patrick,
Thanks for your report on the outcome of the recent meeting at SV. The first
thing I'd like to point out is that I didn't see my name in the apologies and I
did pass on that I would not be able to attend. No matter though.
For my part, I'm glad the group is going to continue. I have unfortunately
been very busy with a project in Carlisle so time has been a little scarce.
The skills set is a good idea so I'll be the first then to put forward my areas
of expertise.
1 BTCS Accreditation in Jaws
2 Trainer of Jaws, Supernova, Kurzweil K1000, Zoomtext and Talks.
3 Experience of delivery to groups.
4 Comprehensive rehabilitation and visual awareness training.
Please note, ATS does not supply any software or hardware at present.
Hope that now starts the ball rolling Patrick. Let me know if you need any
further details.
Steve
----- Original Message -----
From: Patrick Adams
To: 'A2T List'
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 12:48 PM
Subject: [a2t] Meeting at Sight Village 2008 & group future
As promised my notes on the meeting. If there is anything you think I
missed, just post to the list.
Present at the meeting were:
Peter Bosher, Soundlinks Ltd; Enitan T Ajayi CCPH; Tim Burgess, Raised Bar
Ltd; Graham Longley, Aspire Consultancy; Patrick Adams, Riverside Training
Partnership (in the chair); John Ramm, Rammland Ltd; Stephanie Sargeant
Apologies: Brian Cairnie, Cragside Accessibility Ltd; Ashif Sindhi, Sindhi
Systems Ltd (who was nearly there but misunderstood the time of the meeting!)
1. The meeting agreed that the only e-mail route for the group would be via
the FreeList.org facility already set up by Pete Bosher.
2. The group might meet more often but it should meet at least twice a year,
once at Sight Village and the other to be decided by group members in agreement
with each other.
3. There may be tele conferences using Skype but these will not be held
regularly as happened in the months up to February 2008. Any group member,
posting to freelist can request a tele conference meeting to raise any issue
whenever they wish.
4. Group members are strongly encouraged to post regularly to freelist,
putting up ideas, asking other group members for advice, passing on work they
cannot do etc. The lifeblood of the group is through communication.
During the meeting these ideas were discussed:
1. Remote training: there is a huge potential market for VI people who are
not employed to learn how to use their PC based systems with Access Technology.
Carrying out the IT4All training days for BCAB all the trainers in the A2T
group agreed this was a vast untapped market. Just how to tap this market is a
very interesting proposition that the meeting felt should be tackled.
Telephone Training: BCAB already does do this to a limited extent. A2T Group
members can identify potential markets via the local Associations for the Blind
and other local groups and feed this back to other group members in terms of:
how many possible customers would there be in this area overall; what systems
are commonly requested but not fulfilled at present because of the cost of
one-to -one training; what cost would be acceptable for an individual and what
for a group; questions like this would be necessary to ask if a project like
this could get off the ground. Obviously each group member must ask themselves
how much they would be willing to work for per hour, per week, per month or per
year in terms of a marketing strategy. Would members be willing to work at a
lower than acceptable rate to establish themselves working in this area?
If marketing information became available to other group members then it
might help the group as a whole to establish a network via the web site in
different areas of the country
Group members could then decide whether this product was a goer for them.
Then regional training services for live training and national remote training
services could be posted on the web site to enhance the A2T group. Better hit
rates on the site would improve the market profile of the group as a whole.
Remote Training via the web: all the above applies if you use software that
can take over a customer's PC and establish a training session for individual
or group using this route. This approach would incur up-front costs for those
who wanted to join such a scheme. The potential for this approach is that
members could then sell hardware and software to potential trainees and support
these via the web.
Sight & Sound Technology
I had a short discussion with Mervyn Robertson at Sight Village on the Sight
& Sound stand.
Mervyn was most strong on the existence of organisations that bought products
from S & S and did not support those products but wanted their discount. He
said S & S were in the planning stages of setting up accreditation for their
products for resellers, dealers and maybe assessors. This accreditation would
be chargeable but he thought that for organisations and individuals belonging
to our group should not incur the same charges as a large private or government
organisation. He also said it might be possible to come to some arrangement
with those belonging to the BTCS Accreditation scheme. Two things come out of
our discussion:
1. those who have lost their reseller status selling S & S products might
regain this via an accreditation scheme
2. The A2T group should visit S & S in Northampton when this accreditation
scheme is further advanced in the planning stage, say in the Autumn/Winter this
year.
I will keep a watching brief on this possible scheme and report back to group
members.
Lastly, arising out of the meeting at Sight Village and following more
reflections I would like to ask if all members could post to the rest their
individual skills in Access Technology plus what they also do in the way of
assessment or consultancy, plus what Access Technology products they retail.
This information will then be posted to the web site with links to each
person's own web site. This is a very basic beginning to our network. Once we
start getting this detail then we will have to agree who will actually design
the pages and how much this would be for each contributing group member.
Remember you have to invest a little before you get anything out.
That's all from me at present.
Patrick Adams
(who agreed to continue as Chairman until July 2009 when this will be
reviewed by the group)
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.5.3/1565 - Release Date: 21/07/2008
18:36
Other related posts:
