Morning Discussion

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  Sorry to hear that dude, hope your company gets some monies shortly. : one random winner
  • Thanks. :/ : ThomW
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  Schools do their budgets in the summer and right now I am sure their budgets are getting slashed! Do y... : quazar
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    Schools are getting piles of federal funding this year. 50% more compared to last year through stimulus ... : ThomW
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      But that's a very SMALL part of each district's budget. The vast majority of a school's budget is based o... : Bold
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        Our product only costs $2600 to outfit a lab of computers, and a lot of the schools my bosses work with a... : ThomW
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          wow, that's weird, you'd think you guys would be in the money. : slickdoody
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            That's what the three of us are thinking as well. Why aren't people buying this shit? : ThomW
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              Who are you marketing to? The teachers? The people in charge of the computer networks? The school dist... : crimrOw
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                That's one of the things I struggle with personally. The teachers don't seem to have the power to mak... : ThomW
                • #5703

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                  By: crimrOw x Show Full Post

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                  Perhaps this isn't the kind of thing you solve with more code? Whoever is responsible the marketing in your company should think long and hard about how to engage your customers.
                  
                  It was someone's idea to create this software. Why did they think it was a good idea? Someone must know someone who could be used as a resource. Sounds like marketting needs to to figure out how to convince at least one classroom to use this thing. Maybe you have to give it away to a cooperative group, so that as a company you can better understand how to "sell" yourselves?
                  
                  If all else fails, make a "lite" version and up-charge them for additional features. This jives with your thought to put a management layer on top of the existing software. It also _should_ get you some exposure and hopefully will help you guys figure out how to start getting some turn around in sales.

                  Apr 21, 2009 6:08pm PDT
                  Perhaps this isn't the kind of thing you solve with more code? Whoever is responsible the marketing in y... : crimrOw
    • It's probably going to be spent on things other than education. : Sailor of Fortune
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      Despite the federal funding, my school is cutting more than half of the PE programs, less than half from ... : mysled
      • Also, many classes use iClickers already :/ : mysled
• hard time to be selling that right now with all the cut backs in education =( : hirez
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  Promethean? Smart Technologies? Turning Point? : Warlock
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    I know we just lost a potential customer to Promethean's ActiVote software. I haven't seen it in action ... : ThomW
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      ActivExpression does multiple input types (MC, TF, Text, Numeric, Likert Scale) ActiVote is only A-F mul... : Warlock
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        I wish I could see pricing on that ActivExpression stuff. : ThomW
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          $91.76 each or $2,699.00 for 32. Real pricing is probably a little less, they just dropped the price of t... : Warlock
          • Assuming you're somewhere like PA where the schools already own the laptops, we're really competitive and... : ThomW
• Shit man. If I knew for sure the uni I work at needed something like that, I'd get more info on it. Good... : dudehoyt
• That sucks man :( I bet you wouldn't have trouble finding something else pretty quick if you did lose ... : MagicWishMonkey
• =( I hope your company does well. If things go south and you need a contract/money asap, just contact me. : Frozen Pixel
• you've wasted your life. most teachers have no use for that. they try to use it but it's just a pain in t... : burningpantsman
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  You guys are a little late. iClicker and Quizdom are pretty well the top systems out there now. : mancide
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    In Pennsylvania they had this Classroom of the Future program running the last few years, and the state b... : ThomW
    • I think maine has a laptop program too, you guys should look into them : kaddar0
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      That sounds awesome. We had a few instructors that went out and each got a different version of these cli... : mancide
      • I think that's our #1 competition. Closets of unused clickers. :P : ThomW
      • The professors paid for them at your school? The bad part about it here was that some classes used differ... : mysled
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  iphone apps are where da monies at. : edgewise
  • haha this is so true and yet so sad somehow : gakera
  • I'm thinking about making an iPhone app for Wishlist Buddy to get my feet wet with doing projects on it, ... : ThomW
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    There's so much more software being sold in the world than the stuff that gets talked about on the web. T... : rock elf
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      tell me about it. Dental software is ridiculously priced. : edgewise
      • At my new dentist they have a Microsoft Bob style system, that looks like the dental room. Interesting b... : trove
      • Fucking PracticeWorks can eat a bag of dicks. at least 5 years ago when I last had to deal with it...tho : hawkeye
• yeah, that's a shitty situation, similar thing has happened to me (smaller time investment though, 8 mont... : supersonic potato
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  Yeah, blackboard and webct is pretty much universally used here,  and I think the contracts aren't alway... : thief
  • Although what you're doing sounds a bit different and more narrowly focused. : thief
  • ^^^this. I've worked with a number of schools and they've all used Webct : cptstern
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    Those guys aren't really our competition. : ThomW
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      are you SURE? who's at the helm of your company? :( : Downforce
      • my interpretation of his post is that his software is like making all students feel like they are playing... : kaddar0
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        It's not a classroom management system. It's an interactive system for kids to respond to answers in rea... : ThomW
        • ... it's not web-based if that's what you're thinking. : ThomW
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    Blackboard is shitty. :( : MercFox1
    • Yeah, I don't like it. Very poor layout. : ArcKnight
  • moodle's awesome. I developed some things on the side to work with it at my old job : kgargs
  • I didnt realize you worked at UT : noobja
  • webct fucking blows : maulla
  • blackboard fucking sucks. : K1Bond007
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  Hire a business model : gakera
  • Make sure she's blonde with giant boobs. : jingletard
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  ThomW, you have great instinct when it comes to putting yourself in the shoes of the user and designing y... : dmason
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    If there were a "support ThomW" iPhone app I bet allot of shackers would buy it. It doesn't even have to... : gakera
    • I want to see a student response system iPhone app. : Warlock
• :( : askedrelic
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  Market your products to areas in the 'fly-over' states or places like Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri etc... M... : Scotty22
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    We're trying to launch this on the cheap and only working on PA at the moment. The web site will obvious... : ThomW
    • Yeah that's unfortunate :( Sorry to hear your woes man. I've looked at opening some small businesses an... : Scotty22
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  Is it available in foreign languages, say Japanese? : Lone Swordsman
  • No. That's not even on the radar at this point, unfortunately . : ThomW
• Best of luck. I hope it works out ok for you and your peers there. : bombay
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  Doh, that sucks. Do you also provide content for the system, or leave it up to the teachers to integrate... : Ovate
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    We're not selling content, so it's up to the teachers to create it. One of the things we want to do ... : ThomW
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      Hrmm...teachers are so overworked I'd doubt they'd be really thrilled about integrating curricula into a ... : Ovate
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        We're just trying to get into the budgets for next year, so we're not aiming to be a late in the year add... : ThomW
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          Mmm...well, good luck. I didn't mean to sound like I know how to run your company, since you guys are ob... : Ovate
          • Sorry if I seemed a little brusque... I'm stressed out. I do appreciate all the helpful things everyo... : ThomW
• I am the Director of Technology for a school system in Indiana... Can you post more detail and or a websi... : hawthor
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  The woes of an Internet Baron : MoreVespeneGas
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    I miss doing more Internet stuff. This thing is a Winforms app written in C# using .NET 2.0 . I've ... : ThomW
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      You should think about iPhone stuff. Seems like a good cash cow at the moment. You could prob make a ... : MoreVespeneGas
      • Unfortunately I don't think it'd get approved. :( : ThomW
• I might be able to help out. Got any details you can send me? : Dave-A
• Good luck man I went through something like that during the .com days. Hope things work out well in your... : bcyde
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  How have you been marketing it? What kind of sales model are you using? Do you offer a free demo? : theghostofsmdever
  • The bosses own an IT integration firm that does a lot of work in education and basically trying to sell i... : ThomW
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  Sorry to hear that, ThomW. I hope your program gets bought'd. In mostly unrelated news, we had a guy d... : Goncyn
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    Note: did not mean to imply that your software is not good :( : Goncyn
    • lol Don't worry. : ThomW
• just charge everyone 25 cents per [lol] : g0nk