Getting executive buy-in: the value of technology demonstrators

Abstract

Doing a quick search on Wikipedia very soon points out that technology demonstrators are generally associated with warfare, very expensive equipment and risk of loss of life. Demonstrators are believed to be very useful when librarians have to do battle with executives to find appropriate funding for projects based on new Web 2.0 technologies. In this paper the intention is to show how the authors made use of the technology demonstrator strategy to build an integrated, light weight, virtual research environment (VRE) and convince executives that they need to support the initiative and assist in finding sufficient funding to get a full scale pilot project up and running. The paper briefly explains the theory behind VREs and the research done prior to building the demonstrator. The paper will also show how the authors made use of Web 2.0 services to create a working VRE for researchers in malaria. (The researchers are based at a variety of organisations. Issues such as access, authentication and authorisation as well as IP protection had to be kept in mind. Other issues that had to be considered were the researchers’ workflow, ‘ease of use’ and the ultimately the curation of their intellectual output.). Finally the paper highlights the progress to date and explains the role the demonstrator played in convincing executives to take on accountability for the project. The continued role of the library and its information scientists will be provided in some detail.