Category: Primary School ICT

Hiring Illustrators

Posted on by primaryt

I have been in touch with 15 illustrators over the past 10 weeks because Primary Technology has put some money aside to do some new illustrations for Safe Search.  I have been a bit surprised with the responses….

I sent out a tweet asking for contacts and got a whole host of illustrators lined up to do the work,  I then sent each of the illustrators an email with my requirements and stated that we could pay for an example piece.

My current illustrator is fantastic and has done nearly all of the artwork you will see in Primary Technology products.  All the way from the School Email Wizard through to the animated graphic on this blog.  He does rough drafts & quote for each piece and if we like it we give him the green light to go ahead.  In fact every artist I have ever worked with has sent through a rough draft prior to even discussing payment.  This includes artists from all around the globe.

The work is a great opportunity for children book illustrators to have their brand and style visible, surely illustrators are aware that culture is all about influence and to have a great deal of influence (40k views a day) is pretty useful for their career?

So far out of the 15 illustrators only 2 have sent through rough drafts and many have requested payment prior to even creating a rough draft.  Is this normal?  Do illustrators really think that their reputation is enough to be payed just to send a rough draft/idea through about some work?  As someone that does a bit of web design work I never ask for cash up front, I always get paid for delivery and if the customer isn’t happy I never charge.

Anyway, I have the money so I’m going to pay to see rough draft pieces even though I think it’s backwards.  If I’m not happy should I ask for my money back?

Primary School TV – Hello world

Posted on by primaryt

Primary School TV has just opened up for public beta. I have been involved in the project for several months now. The cool thing about Primary School TV is how it filters content, I did a short talk about this and uploaded it to youtube.

PrimaryT is letting me release the UI and some of the aggregation technology as open source, so keep an eye on github. It should prove as a useful template / boiler plate for people wanting to make their own tv / video site.

Removing barriers of accessing video content whilst keeping a child in a safe environment was the main challenge. Thankfully (after rigorous testing) we think we have overcome those challenges and the initial testing has been positive.

I hope you get some time to check it out and let me know what you think/how it performs.

Learning Without Frontiers conference review

Posted on by primaryt

Learning Without Frontiers is an ICT in Education conference run by Graham Brown-Martin.  This year the conference was hosted at the Brewery, a fine exhibition venue in London.

The first day at LWF is a free day(as long as you don’t mind paying £2.50 for a cup of tea) and there are plenty of great presentations and kids do some fantastic things with technology, anyone can come along to this free day and there is no fee.  The conference is really a premium event, delegates do have to reach deep into their pocket and in return the 3 day event needs to return value for money.

Delegates are encouraged to “not be sheeps” and to engage with people who they have never met before.  For me this is the unlocking factor of attending days two and three of this event as it brings a more “Teachmeet” style ambiance.

Apple overload.

I mean serious Apple overload..  Many delegates got free iPads and this sprung up a whole new level of middle age “fan boi’ness”.  I’m not one to mince my words on Apple and the people that buy it and this post is no exception.  If you are between the age of 30-60, earn between £30k-£80k per year and have some sort of middle manager job you are going to start hating me and never re-visit this blog.  That’s okay because my blog isn’t really aimed at you even though I am aware you control the purse strings and make lots of important decisions.  It sucks for me but at least you know where I stand..  To summarize..  Listening to grown men who work in ICT and Edu talk about a physical device like it is their first born child is just worrying.   You should not love a vendor or product, the simple fact that you use the word love when describing a piece of technology means you are not making descisions based on learning but based on something you can’t actually equate.  This is risky and not sustainable.  I’m an open source advocate, so Apple products are a non starter for me..   I told you that you would hate me…

You are about to hate me even more..  People say “But Mac just works”..  This is utter bollocks and was proven time and time again with Mac specific related technical problems during presentations.  Absolutely every presenter I saw overcame these problems, I think Jason from the Gadget show (whom I don’t personally rate) did a good job of this as his 2 apple based demonstrations wouldn’t work.  He calmly worked around these technical issues in an extremely professional manner.

Look up.

Your apple product does not have an augmented app for getting down stairs, so why are you trying to navigate unfamiliar stairs while trying to use it?  I’m surprised there haven’t been more damaged hips!  I know my last 2 points weren’t directly a review of LWF but I feel it needs to be said.  As Ed Tech folk we must know when is the right time to use technology.

Lead generation for exhibitors

I spoke to a few exhibitors at LWF to get their general thoughts about the conference, obviously exhibiting at a conference like LWF is a pricey experience, although way less pricey than it’s competitors.  Graham does a great job of bringing in the big boys like Nintendo and Sony, who often look a bit confused about what they are selling, conversations about the motor skills of playing Mario Kart whilst enjoying beating the sales rep at their own products is extremely satisfying and it’s a great place to unwind for 10 minutes or so.

It was great to see Meru, Microsoft, Edugeek.  I sort of didn’t expect to see “Land of Me”, they have a weird business model and I hope the are able to recover some of the cost from events such as LWF.  I sort of get the impression that Graham has an involvement in this project or is passionate about it, I figured they were worth a special mention because they did a great job decorating their stand and seem like nice people.

I’m not going to lie, if a presentation felt like a sales pitch I left.  It happened on a few occasions, Land of Me was one of these.  Anyway..  To summarize, the exhibitors I spoke to all had very positive things to say about the event, mostly commenting on the quality of the leads they were receiving in comparison to events such as BETT.

The Brewery

The organization and staff at the Brewery were second to non.  Previous events I have been to here have felt slightly disjointed with large queues however it is clear that the Brewery have resolved these issues.   The food was fantastic, a real unique menu gave the event a personalized feeling which I think sort of summarizes what LWF is about — sort of somewhere in-between the completely personal feeling of a Teachmeet and the corporate behemoth that is BETT.

Live Stream

The live stream wasn’t coming through a vision mixer and was just a head/shoulder view of the presenter.  Obviously this isn’t ideal.  It’s something minor but with more and more people joining online it would be a good thing to resolve.  The Live stream must of worked well though because people were commenting on presentations.  The live stream wont be the only video footage available from the conference.  LWF has invested heavily in recording the presentations , this investment is doing to provide a professional looking video series, these videos will then be published on youtube and various other video sharing websites so you can enjoy them at your own leisure.

Summary

Overall the event was extremely useful, the price point seems fair considering the amount of resources available on a daily basis.  You have to ignore a lot of the sales pitch presentations and the constant brand name dropping.  Once you are thick skinned and you know which presentations to catch you will love this event and get a lot more from it if you are looking to provide ICT services inside the UK.

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Why we’re not exhibiting at BETT

Posted on by primaryt

Disclaimer:  Views in this post are my own and are intended to help Emap improve BETT.  I am not “knocking the institution”, I am simply voicing my feelings & concerns.

The technology in education market is still recovering from a huge E-Learning credit hangover, temporarily remedied by the “Harnessing Technology Grant” which acted as a sort of short term “fry up” solution.

Thankfully we never became dependant on either pots of money but a lot of companies did and then extended their debts into BSF bids which could only be propped up by Venture capitalist investment.

VC investment meant the stakes placed on ICT in Education were higher than ever and subsequently the marketing budgets available for the “top dogs” increased.  Naturally prices for BETT increased and we begin our tale called “The Hair of the BETT dog”.

In this post I am going to be documenting why we aren’t exhibiting at BETT 2011 in the hope to help Emap make future policy decisions that properly reflect exhibitors needs, especially the needs of small start ups with great new ideas.

Less delegates are attending

*Google Insight showing BETT Show search terms by frequency.  According to Google Searches BETT peaked in popularity in 2004 and has declined ever since.  Of course Emap will claim this isn’t true, yet there are pictures from BETT 2010 showing periods of time where entire isles were soulless.  It would be interesting to see some sort of Average # of delegates per square meter over a 10 year period to see how that weighs up.

Yet it’s getting bigger

More and more companies were exhibiting during the “drinking period” so BETT grew it’s floor space.  Over the last 4 years it feels that less companies are exhibiting and you see a lot of unused, open stands.  This shows a lack of demand and therefore the exhibitor price should reflect this.  So does it?  No.  BETT’s price year on year has risen — As a Yorkshire man I can safely ask “What the deuce?”.

Value for money

Take for instance PrimaryPad, to exhibit PrimaryPad we need 4+ Machines to demonstrate the power of its collaborative writing. Will our presence at BETT sway them to purchase PrimaryPad?  Possibly, but how many schools would need to purchase PrimaryPad just to cover the overheads of BETT?  400, unless we put our prices up (which we had to do with School Email when that went through this same process)..

Sponsoring events such as Teachmeet allow us to engage with educators in a much more intimate environment for a fraction of the cost of exhibiting at BETT.  BETT is often a small business’ largest annual single purchase.

Real life is slow

The internet is much faster, we used to attend BETT to find out the latest things companies are doing but now companies have blogs, newsletters, email mailing lists, radio stations & tv channels constantly keeping us up to date..

BETT isn’t e3, no one saves their hype for BETT.  No big major announcements are made at BETT.

I struggle most years to do a top 10 BETT new technology that is truly reflective of a classrooms needs mostly because I have already either a) reviewed the item/service before or b)  it was a great idea but hidden away in a tiny stand upstairs that no one can get to.

Green issues

Technology is never green, but consider how insane it is to travel to see a demonstration of a web based piece of technology?  Getting my head around that is an issue, so many great tools exist for demonstrating your products over the internet that the notion of travelling at all to see new technology is just a bit well, erm, old fashioned.

Appearance

We want to be seen as a modern, forward thinking company.  BETT should reflect our needs by offering us more cost effective ways of engaging our customers.

The BETT Award

The award is one of my bug bears about BETT.  A lot of emphasis is placed around the award yet it is hard to meet people who work in the industry that don’t think the agreement for who will win the award is done in a dark, smokey room, somewhere in westminster and goes to the highest biggest candidate.  However some great companies/services/products have won the awards so it’s far from all doom and gloom 🙂

Summary

I think BETT is a fantastic national treasure but it’s time for a new angle, something value reflective for both small and large exhibitors.  All of the staff at Emap did a great job last year and all in all BETT is a fantastic CPD tool for teachers.   Drinking time will start again soon but until that time let’s consider a way of nurturing small, creative business instead of scaring them off with huge overheads.

To any company/marketing execs reading this then you should know that if your company isn’t being interesting all year round and communicating well with teachers then you will still not be interesting at BETT.  Your marketing will fail if you focus on a once a year push.

Animated Images courtesy of “If we don’t, Remember me“..

The response this post got from the event organizers

Joe Wilcox from EMAP (the company that handles the BETT event) responded to this blog post:

There is a good chance that readers of this blog for whom the annual BETT show is very well-known are not familiar with me or my role at the organising company, Emap Connect. I joined the company in July last year as the Content Director responsible for any current and planned events or media properties bearing the BETT name. Thus far, I’ve had the pleasure of working to keep the BETT seminar programme populated with insightful speakers, a task made more challenging by the demise of Becta, via which a significant percentage of seminar leaders were confirmed in previous years. I have also really enjoyed creating from scratch two new leadership conferences being hosted alongside BETT for the first time next week. These are designed to ensure that school leaders and representatives of national, regional and local government from the UK and from the wider world continue to attend the show in good numbers, i.e. by adding a compelling new reason to attend. Another enjoyable activity was travelling around the Middle East forming alliances with the ministries and school operators with whose valuable support we successfully delivered – back in November in Abu Dhabi – the inaugural BETT-branded event specifically created to connect the educators of that region with technologies designed to improve their systems and learning outcomes. Going forward, I will be expected to have some input into the strategic direction of BETT here in the UK and around the world.

When I saw John’s article explaining why his company has chosen not to exhibit at next week’s BETT show, I accepted that the piece was written in the spirit of offering my colleagues and I some advice on how best to keep the event relevant, well-attended and genuinely useful. We accept fair comment and don’t want to get into arguments with anyone who wishes to articulate an opinion about the value of BETT.

I do, however, wish to point out that the article contains a significant factual inaccuracy which readers should keep in mind when considering the views that John has expressed.

John alleges that BETT attendance has fallen over the period 2004-2010. The evidence that John offers is that “according to Google Searches BETT peaked in popularity in 2004 and has declined ever since.” He remarks that “of course Emap will claim this isn’t true”. Indeed, not least because BETT attendance figures are audited by ABC (www.abc.org.uk), whose role is the independent verification of media performance, thereby providing a major trading currency for media buyers and owners across print, events, digital and evolving platforms.

Here are the numbers:

BETT 2010 BETT 2009 BETT 2008 BETT 2007 BETT 2006 BETT 2005 BETT 2004
Total 36955 38359 35881 29343 28315 27015 24508
Visitors 29262 29496 28438 29343 28315 27015 24508
Exhibitors 7693 8863 7443 NA NA NA NA

Yes, the 2010 event was a little less well-attended than the previous year’s show, but following a nice jump in visitor numbers from 2004 to 2005, I would say that the size of the crowd with whom exhibitors have the chance to engage has remained fairly steady over the period that John examines in his article. John has taken a decline in the frequency of Google search terms as evidence of BETT shrinking, but there must be some other explanation for why fewer people are now Googling the name ‘BETT’ than back in 2004. Answers on a postcard, please!

John doesn’t currently find that an investment in BETT makes sense for his particular company and of course it’s entirely in his gift to arrive at the conclusion. It was gratifying, though, to read that he continues to praise the show’s benefits for visitors. I also take very seriously John’s suggestion that BETT might offer more value to larger organisations than he feels it does for companies of the scale of his own. I feel we’ve gone some way towards addressing that with the creation of an expanded ‘Innovation Avenue’ zone at this year’s show. This offers space at a reduced rate to companies in start-up mode. This is a step in a positive direction, I feel, and we are looking at ways of going further along that route within the practical constraints of using the Olympia site. I am certainly open to suggestions about this question and about every other aspect of what BETT does, who it serves and how they are might be served better. Keeping this open-mindedness at the heart of what we do is part of my brief here. With this in mind, I shall be assembling a BETT Advisory Board as shortly after next week’s show as I practically can. This will be composed of a rich mix of BETT stakeholders – visitors and exhibitors; large exhibitors and small; BETT loyalists and BETT critics. I have extended an invitation to John to be a part of this and I look forward to his contributions to the discussions.

To everyone who will be joining us at Olympia next week, I offer my thanks for your continued support and hope you find the trip enjoyable as well as productive. If you won’t be joining us this time, I’ll see what we can do to tempt you into West London in 2012.

Joe Willcox, Content Director, Emap Connect