One Thursday afternoon this past January I went over to TADEPA, a local NGO in Ayacucho, Peru who works with people who live in the country side to improve food security, health, and education in the Andes regions of Peru. I went to TADEPA to show the administrative assistant how to enter the webpage and add pictures and change content on pages, as well as add new…

One Thursday afternoon this past January I went over to TADEPA, a local NGO in Ayacucho, Peru who works with people who live in the country side to improve food security, health, and education in the Andes regions of Peru. I went to TADEPA to show the administrative assistant how to enter the webpage and add pictures and change content on pages, as well as add new pages. Although I’m short on time, it made sense to go and do this training in order to collect data and feedback for our upcoming videos on common administration tasks in a CivicSpace/Drupal website. We plan to distribute these desktop recordings to our clients and others who may find them useful.

The meeting at TADEPA was frustrating for one reason – the person is also the secretary, the phone rings every 10 minutes, and someone visits the office every 5 minutes, it seems (another reason why making desktop recordings of using CS makes sense for everyone). This distraction did bother me, but the fact that she just started using Microsoft Messenger for the first time in her life (chat for the first time overall) to talk to the Lima office in January I did not see as an obstacle…

So, just when I am about to do the final step on adding an image node, and then adding that image to a page with image assist, the secretary runs off to answer the phone and I sit there kicking myself in frustration. When I finally get to the point and say, "and see? look how easy that was!" she looks dumfounded at the computer monitor, and I look at her, and my frustration peaks in that room colored nicely by the 5pm golden sun coming through the westward facing windows…and she finally turns to me, tapping on the monitor like it was a touch-screen device, and says "Why does this have to be so hard? Why do I have to go and add an image, then go and add that image to a page…that’s really difficult. Why can’t I just add the image to the page all in one go?"

And I say, yeah, you know, why CAN’T you do that? And I think to myself "Man, if that was how it was done I could have showed her how to do it all in one go, without the phone or visitor interruption because it would take half the time and be 10 times easier to understand and remember how to do."

So I leave after two hours in their office, but really only having trained her for maybe 30 minutes, and we agree to meet again. We never met again. She has no time. Tomorrow I am going to meet with the director and hopefully get a new volunteer to work with (+1 for the training videos – much more reusable that personal meetings).

However, later that day I went perusing through the CS and Drupal forums looking for an easier way…theres GOT to be an easier way! I join in on a conversation at drupal.org about image management in drupal, one of the many threads that looks at how to do things from so many angles – image module, upload module, inline images and filters, etc. I explain my stance here (http://drupal.org/node/15877#comment-26017) basically saying there must be a better way, but really did not think there way. Then Boris saves the day by tipping me off on htmlarea’s UploadImage tool. After a patch to the node module, I’ve got UploadImage working, and think, wow, how is that for turn around.

One day I’m gonna show the secretary in TADEPA this way so she doesn’t think technology totally sucks. But I am not saying the image node and image assist way sucks! It is one way, and its use of CSS to insert the image is one way. UploadImage is another way. Inline is another way. People have different needs. In this case, UploadImage is ideal. The point of this story is I was able to take the feedback from a novice user of the CS/Drupal platform, consider their advice, and turn it around by plugging in a different solution that works better for them, and finding that solution through asking questions in the developer and user forums.

Less than 24 hours I was drooling at my desk and calling Eric on Skype saying "look at this! look at this!" and I guess I was extra psyched because of the two hours of frustration the day before, but we agreed, this is a great method to add images.

TADEPA did not pay anything for their website. Just the domain and server space. We do lots of free websites for NGOs working in Peru and other areas of South and Central America, as well as pro bono work for orgs. in the States. TADEPA does not do much with their website. Hopefully I will get them excited to start writing some news stories tomorrow in the meeting with Florencio. However, other clients make much more use of their CS/Drupal powered website, especially distributing content management between staff members and letting others blog on their website about their work. Take Un Mundo for example (http:/.www.unmundo.org). Before only one person updated their website which sat on HTML and frames. Now people based in different parts of the world, such as in Honduras, in Mexico, and in California can sign into the website and write new content, add images, and write on the blog, keeping news and volunteer experiences up-to-date to keep visitors informed.

A partner of Development Seed in Lima, Peru, is about to launch their website on CivicSpace. The release date is set back but I write about this story here: http://www.developmentseed.org/blog/?q=node/130. GESTAL’s current website is on html templates. I write that after demoing CS for GESTAL "I turn to him (Fredy, the director) and ask, "so, is this something you are interested in, do you want to use a system like this…" after a short pause, he looks at me and says, "I don’t think it is a matter of want. We need this; it’s necessary!" He looked at me like I had been hiding this from him and seemed to be saying why didnt you give me this six months ago!? We are excited to put CS/Drupal in the hands of GESTAL...the organization is very active in their use of technology and one of the few clients I know of, both USA and outside of USA, who has GAIM, Emule, and Skype on their office desktop.

When I look back at these three examples of the clients we work with, I see how different they are in both the structure of the organization and what they are trying to do with their websites. What I am certain of is keeping the website on the CS/Drupal platform will help each one of them meet their future online goals. TADEPA may not be updating their content today, but their website is prepared to move with their organization. I can’t wait to see Fredy from GESTAL start using the mass mailer to promote their trainings and other services. Our clients challenge me to see our work from different angles…even if I know TADEPA is not going to be taking full advantage of their image tools at the moment, taking their feedback into consideration made things that much easier for other clients.

Watching how GESTAL will use their website to improve their work will give us an opportunity to setup a conference call with TADEPA, Development Seed, and GESTAL and talk to the two organizations about where they are headed on the Internet. Then there will be two phones ringing in TADEPA’s office, the land line and Skype…but that wont matter because they’ll have their CS/Drupal training CD and it’s probably GESTAL calling telling them to get their act together…that they want to give them a microenterprise loan to help with their Andean artisan project in Ayacucho, but Fredy thinks TADEPA went under in November 2004… It’s 2005! Update your site!