How do you explain to someone what EE does when that person may have limited computer skills, may not understand how a database works, or even what one is?

Some days I have to remind myself that the Internet is still a new experience for many people. Even folks who have been using email for a decade may not know much about the web or how websites work, and frequently they are the very people charged with choosing a CMS and/or CMS consultant for their business.

Also, among these folks is a sub-group I’ve run into that hate anything that has to do with databases. They have an emotional reaction to databases as if they are inherently evil and out to destroy the world.

When we’re presenting to folks like this, we might be using the latest techno-speak to describe the website we’ll build for them, and they might be hearing something completely different.

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Now that’s a great analogy Kurt! I’ve never found a decent one size explaination for everyone but that pretty much fits the bill.

The one I’ve used most often revolves a kid and box of Lego (toy building bricks) - dad asks him to build a car then show hime when the kids made it.

Hi Kurt,

Great read. I do pretty much the same thing here except I turn it on its head and always start out with the simple version as opposed to blinding clients with science. I think that it is much easier to find out if people know what you are talking about and understand technical concepts if you do it in that way as opposed to starting off all techno speak.

If a person starts asking you loads of questions using words that you know could only mean that they have better knowledge of the internet then you can ramp it up a bit as opposed to if you started out talking all techno to them then they may just site there thinking “I’m supposed to know all of this aren’t I?” in which case at this point they may be too afraid to say they don’t understand and then you have no knowledge (unless you can read minds like I can ) - amateur magician too me of whether they understood or not until at the end of the discussion they just say we don’t want to go this route which could have been due to their not understanding you correctly.

So to sum up, you have an excellent analogy technique there and one that I use all the time (although not with food) but I always always start out non-technical first (unless I know first hand the persons capabilities) and then step it up a notch or two if I deem it necessary.

Great read though, thanks.

Best wishes,

Mark

Kurt, where did they find you? You seem to have a helpful analogy for everything! I appreciate your incites and helpful ideas from your experience, thank you.

I don’t have much to offer that directly relates to your example, however, I have found that one of the biggest challenges is getting stakeholders and content creators to ‘see’ what’s possible. I’ve found that when developing a site or new features, there is often opposition which arises from a lack of understanding of the application, but once I have explained what the software can do, there is a lightbulb moment where the stakeholder says “oh you mean we can do A without giving up B?”.

In particular, the concept of separating content and design can confuse people. A silly example: If I’m building a website for a fruit store, the ability of allowing dynamic data about bananas to be displayed in the ‘fruit’ section, as well as the ‘pancake topping’, ‘cereal topping’, and ‘cakes’ sections often does not occur to people. So when I propose this, people who are more familiar with static sites, or feel they have particular ‘ownership’ over the ‘banana’ portfolio object to bananas being in the desert section because they don’t understand they can have A and B (and C…).

The stakeholder’s potential to create and manipulate data in meaningful ways is limited until they realise the possibilities that EE provides.
(And I cannot substitute because I have less understanding of the meaning of the data)

I told you it was a silly example, but you get the point.

Anyway, thanks for getting the neurons firing!

This is the way I explain EE to people. I can’t remember, but I may have stolen this from Rick in the early pMachine days. I tell them that EE is like faucets.

You can load up a database with whatever information you want, including images, descriptions, stories, titles, etc. Then you place these faucets on your page and you can pour out any information that you want. You can pour out short descriptions on one page, and full stories on another page. You can tell your faucet to grab sequential information, random info or category specific info.

I have explained this to a few people and they seem to “get it”

Good article, Kurt! I like the writing you’re doing; has an NPR ‘telling-a-tale’ quality to it. And I find you to be an interesting person.

Looking forward to more.

Ramone.

I recognize a lot in your story Kurt, since I am developing mostly directly for the end users who will fill the site with articles, I get a lot of people that really don’t have a clue what a website is and how it works.

I don’t really use an analogy though (but I do like your example). I usually convince people with a very, very simple SAEF form, where I show off how easy it is to make a new article and tell NOTHING about all the possibilities, because it could scare them off (this happened to me several times). A lot of people that have to provide the content do not have the time to do it, so it is essential that they can do it very quick and smoothly.

It’s only when they feel comfortable with the concept, that I start providing other possibilities like image uploads, mailing lists, forms, the control panel, groups etc etc.

So first get them going with the very basics, hide all complicating factors and gradually tell them the possibilities

I always use the car analogy which seems to go on and on…

1) You can get one for a few quid from the back pages of your local paper, but you’ll need another one in about 3 months

2) You can pay £250K for one if the competition needs it but you’ll need a team of technicians to keep it going and get the best out of it

3) The chassis on all of them looks similar, but depending on what you want to do with it is what you bolt on. Do you want a mobile burger van or a race car?

4) You can add on bits as you go along to a degree, but don’t try to turn the racecar into a burger van half way through the build

5) Having one that looks just like your neighbour’s will do a reasonable job and be quite cheap, one that will turn heads needs some more creativity and a lot more time and effort to build

If I have them in front of a computer I just show them a site and edit something on front of them, that tends to do the trick!

Personally, when dealing with people who don’t understand this kind of things, I don’t talk about it… Meaning, I don’t use words like PHP and MySQL (they’re not words to start with anyway and just focus on what’s important to them: up to date website because in house editing is a breeze, lower maintenance costs if any, etc… My job’s a little different though, I’m not specifically selling them EE (some of them don’t even need a CMS, or already have another system in place), so I usually don’t focus my pitch on the CMS aspect of things, I tend to gravitate more around a problem/solution rhetoric and the balance between their business goals and their user’s needs…

I haven’t ran into anyone who feels strongly about DBs yet… If I ever do, I’ll just tell them EE runs on solar power