I want to promote another service. Normally, blogs from companies tend to talk about their own product. But, as you must have noticed, we are not a normal outfit!
In the past fortnight I have become increasingly impressed and excited by the opportunities that Skype offers us.
Skype is like a phone, but over the internet! You can video conference and share screens (so you can see what the other person is doing on their computer if they invite you). Skype is very easy to use, and has lots of free stuff (like BrainPOP UK ) and has even more useful premium features, at a cost (also like BrainPOP UK!)
I have already posted about our day in Shropshire, where Ann and I drove up to a hotel near Shrewsbury, and spent the day meeting attendees at a conference – in an exhibition area full of suppliers. Fun as the day was, we did travel 250 miles to be there at 8:30 only get 60mins when we were able to talk to teachers (30 mins as part of two breaks).
We believe that quality is more important than quantity of conversations when we do events, but that means that we don’t get to see everyone. This reduces the Return on Investment (ROI) we get on the event – because unless we need to get a certain number of people to pay for a subscription in order to pay for the costs of the event! I guess what I am saying is that although the personal touch and chance to meet people in person is always better, there are big costs to consider:
- Internal Impact - cost of a day out of the office, costs to pay for the event, exhibition fees, printing charges, etc (BrainPOP UK pays!)
- External Impact – carbon footprint of a car journey (9 kg of CO2) and of stand (printing on paper, electricity, etc) and being just another ‘supplier’ at another ‘stand’ in another hall in another event – being part of the crowd reinforcing an old model. (Everyone pays!!)
Now, it was totally worth going to Shropshire – because we met loads of great people – but mainly as we did not have to ‘hard sell’ – as Steve Beard, a local ICT advisor, already loves us! As a result, we had lots of high quality conversations! Which was nice.
But making decisions about where and when to go when we are invited is not always so easy. The same week I had been invited to a new product demo day, to the LA advisory team in Doncaster. There was no real prior knowledge of BrainPOP UK, except that one of the team, Damian Ward, is one of the Yorks and Humber Teachmeet organisers, for whom we made a bespoke Teachmeet movie . We were to be one of many suppliers invited in to meet the team, show new stuff and then leave. The advisory team might buy BrainPOP UK for the LA – but this sort of decision takes months! More likely is that advisors are always looking for new resources to tell their schools about. This demo would give them the info to decide whether BrainPOP UK is something they wanted to recommend. This is not something we have the infrastructure to do all the time! We are a small team without a national sales force – so it is not as easy for us as other suppliers to get to meet everyone!
It would have been a 6 hour round trip from Oxford to Doncaster (20kg of CO2) for a 60min slot with 3 people.
This is where Skype came to the rescue! Thanks to the support of their excellent IT technician, Phil, we were able to get around the system blocks to skype, and get a video conference going.
OK, so the sound quality was not as good as it would have been if I had been there in person, and we did not get to shake hands, or really ‘connect’ on a personal level,…
BUT, we did get to meet the Doncaster ICT advisory team, demo BrainPOP UK, talk through their questions and concerns, discuss the subscription prices, and got some good feedback about the site! They asked for a trial, which I gave them, to evaluate it further with their schools. … Then it was time for the next presenter – my time was up – and I said goodbye.
All in all, I think we made the right choice about using Skype for this opportunity, and we’d like to do this more.
So – what do you think?
Would you be happy to have a demo of BrainPOP UK through Skype?
Are you able to access Skype from your school computers?
