It's been a couple weeks since my last post, but don't be fooled. The workload has increased exponentially since then. Our community liaison researchers have been extremely busy making
powerpoints, giving presentations, testing users and giving us great feedback.
A few weeks ago, David and Lawrence from Alert Bay set up a booth at the annual Alert Bay
Seafest. They were also handing out brochures and meeting plenty of people who are interested in the
RRN.
Then, last week, David, Lawrence and Lillian all made the trek up to
Kingcome Inlet, which is a small community north of Alert Bay.
They had a great time presenting to a group of Elders and young people. It was also a good time to catch up with friends and family. Here's what David and Lawrence had to say about their experience:
We are back home now after our trip to Kingcome inlet Dave, Lilian,and myself travelled up by a sea plane which was awesome. When we arrived we sat up for the following day we had 2 presentations set up for the day one at 10am and one at 2pm. Our first presentation was for chief and counsel and band employees they all had a lot of interest and had a lot of questions about the site and items on the site. We were able to share what we know so far, and also said that we would be open to help as we go further with the job and the site .The 2pm presentation was a group of elders and youth so it was a good mix. There was also a lot of excitement about the site and the items on the site the elders had a few questions on where they might find other items from Kingcome we did tell them that the Glenbow Museum would be on board with the RRN so there would be items on in the future...so over all it was a awesome trip would do it again. - Lawrence
It's so great to see that there is excitement about the
RRN in these communities, and we're lucky we have liaisons working hard in remote places to demonstrate the
RRN there. It's also great hearing feedback from community members- good and bad! Or should I say good and "constructive". It only helps us more to know exactly what features need to be improved and which users have trouble with the site. We gain a lot of valuable information from the training sessions and demonstrations that all of our liaisons give.
To view more pictures of Dave, Lawrence and Lillian's trip, go to our
Flickr Photostream.So moving away from those remote places, there has also been a lot happening here, in Vancouver and
Musqueam. Jody and June have been presenting the
RRN to everyone they can get their hands on and we've had a lot of feedback from them as well.
Not only have they given demonstrations to Elders, coworkers and other community members, they also recently tackled a group of children (not literally of course). With the help of Courtenay and Cindy Sparrow, and a free pizza, they got a group of kids together to look at the site and browse themselves. I knew that this would be challenging (holding the attention span of kids can be hard sometimes) and honestly I didn't quite expect the reaction they got. It was amazing to hear that they all had a blast for over 3 hours, showing the site, talking with the group and proving that the
RRN is really a new way to look at information and objects.
Here's what June had to say:
The presentation focus groups for ages 8 to 12 years that Jody and I planned and worked with Courtenay and Cindy Sparrow went beyond my expectations. The children and teens were quiet, listened, and were genuinely excited and asked many questions concerning the website. The games that we placed in a collection at the end were great as the children really gave us a lot of feedback and guessed many things about the artefacts.
She also told me that children saw things on the
RRN that they'd never seen before, and many of them know the artists as friends and family. After hearing this, and what Dave and Lawrence said said about their trip to
Kingcome Inlet really made me think. I study museums, I study anthropology, I read theory and write about academic things. But the ability for community members to see objects,
artefacts, personal items and information goes beyond any of my academic experience. I am completely out of my league and always in awe of how people interact with these items on the
RRN and in museums.Our community liaison researchers make a project like this possible.
"Some families got to see items from there grandparents or parents for the first time so for me, I had a great feeling of doing my job but also taking care of people in the way of bringing back items via RRN to our people." - Lawrence Isaac.
As we get closer the
RRN launch, it's statements like these that will carry us through all of the hard work ahead and in my opinion make it all worthwhile.
Get in contact with us by emailing feedback@rrnpilot.org if you would like one of these demonstrations in your community.
Hannah
