An Interview with John Gough

IT Manager, Swindon Communication Project

Reprinted with Permission

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askSam:  Tell us about your organization and your role within it.

JOHN GOUGH: The Swindon Communication Project is a charity based project in the UK.  It enables disabled people to communicate with each other and the world via a 'bulletin board'. We have donations of computer equipment from various local and national companies including Honda, Motorola, Allied Dunbar. Our bulletin board contains local and national information stored in askSam databases.

askSam: Which of our products)do you use and what kind of information do you have in your askSam database(s)?

JOHN GOUGH: We are currently using askSam and the askSam Web Publisher for 6 databases on our system. askSam and the askSam Web Publisher enables us to very easily publish databases dynamically in Intranet web pages. We have a database of 6,500 national names and addresses of other organizations working in the disability field which our users can search online.

We also use askSam for an automatic noticeboard. Users can enter in their own public notice via a form that is included in a database, and in effect publish their own web pages without any knowledge of html.  Individuals can then browse through the notices online.

We also use your sites.ask database for web links. Our links are sorted into groups with a one line comment field. We find it is easy to add or remove a link from the 'links' pages without having to learn the html codes.

askSam:  Why did you select askSam over other products?

JOHN GOUGH:  Ease of use and ease of set up.  We did look at using Microsoft SQL server and Access databases but the skills required to get such a system up and running seemed vast.

askSam:  In what ways has askSam helped you in your daily routine?

JOHN GOUGH:  The askSam Web Publisher has enabled some of our web site to be managed by our administrator without knowledge of html.

askSam:  What applications do you plan for askSam in the future?

JOHN GOUGH: We are currently working on a recipe database of over 13,000 recipes which will be categorized and searchable.

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John Gough

Swindon Communication Project

Shaftesbury Centre,

Percy Street

Swindon UK

Email: john.gough@scp-swindon.co.uk

URL: http://www.scamp.org.uk