You Need
January Journeys
1st January 2001
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John Simnett (age 50) is shortly setting sail south for the Antarctic where he will run the infamous Antarctic Marathon. Inclusive Technology and Enterprise Oil are sponsors. John has already paid all his own expenses. Anything else we help him raise will be doubled by Enterprise Oil and will go straight to the Kids' Kidney Appeal at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Inclusive Technology are hoping to raise £5,000 which Enterprise Oil will match and turn into £10,000. More about John's Journey. |
 John Simnett visits the Magnetic North Pole with David Hempleman-Adams in 1996 |
Does the name John Simnett sound familiar? It should. Few people have done more to help organisations working in the field of Special Needs and IT.
In the eighties John founded Simnett Computers and was the major distributor for Acorn and Concept Keyboard. For each Concept Keyboard John sold he made a donation to the Oxford ACE Centre (ACE was then as now doing ground-breaking work for children with communication problems). As director of Manchester SEMERC, I joined with Simnett Computers to promote Concept Keyboards though mailings, advice and software lists which John matched with extra discounts. In 1988, John visited the newly set up Oldham SEMERC and offered to sponsor our new "Micros for Special Needs" Exhibition to the tune of £8,000 with the words:
"This is so worthwhile that if Simnett Computers
can't sponsor this,
I will do it personally". He did.
Later, when John was head of Cumana we worked together with SEMERC's development director Trish Hornsey on the Acorn A4000S special needs machine and the Oldham Overlay Keyboard as well as introducing Cumana CD drives to Acorn machines.
It is payback time. For every person who visits our Not at BETT 2001 exhibition and Seminars on Wednesday to Friday 10/11/12 January we will donate £5 to John Simnett's Kid's Kidney Appeal and Enterprise Oil will match this £pound for £pound so that £10 goes straight to the Charity. Time is short. You can telephone us for more details of Not at BETT (01457 819790 from the UK) or email your name and postal address so that we can send them to you. BETT 2001 itself is certainly worth a visit. Last year BETT's 360 exhibitors attracted 22,120 teachers.
If you can't get to Not at BETT 2001 then how can you contribute? Easy! Just email me a 100 word critical assessment of one of our web sites before January 31st 2001 and we will donate £5 to the Kid's Kidney Appeal on your behalf. Not only will Enterprise Oil match our donation but you will be helping to make one of our web sites more closely meet your needs and those of and thousands like you.
The web sites you may wish to comments on are:
www.inclusive.co.uk
www.inclusive.net
www.isec2000.org.uk
www.eenet.org.uk
www.iddc.org.uk
www.bdainternationalconference.org
Between them these sites provide many thousands of pages and information. One hundred words on how one of the sites did or didn't help you would be really helpful to us. You may find your views published in my February Findings next month so do tell us who you are and what you do.
As soon as BETT 2001 and our own Not at BETT are over, Inclusive Technology will be setting forth to Vancouver in Canada and the second ATIA Conference in Orlando, Florida. American resources like Tech/ communicators, AbleNet switches, IntelliKeys Classic, IntelliKeys USB, AlphaSmart and Big Keys are really important to UK learners and we want to be sure to find the next generation of devices and software for you - this is what ATIA is all about.
In contrast, although our SwitchIt! software is doing very well published under licence by IntelliTools in the USA, good British access devices and Scandinavian switch software is not nearly as widely known or even available in North America as they should be. Wider markets mean wider choice at lower prices in both Europe and North America. Our mission is to widen the markets for British and European resources in North America. Do wish us well.
A quarter of a mile is a short journey, unless you are moving your whole business. We are. The Pennine Pub we had hoped to move to could not be linked to ISDN telephone lines. Instead we are moving a few hundred yards downstream on the banks of the River Tame and should be in our new much larger unit by mid-February. Despite expanding our current home four times over, we have just outgrown it again. Last month an increase in sales of an incredible 106% was your way of telling us not to delay further! Our finance director, Helen Carr, is masterminding the move aided by our conference administrator Alison Thorpe. Photos and a full report in my March Mutterings.
Helen Carr (left) and Alison Thorpe
Martin Littler