> >So, our firm's IT department is *FINALLY* thinking about internets.
> >I showed the guy your site, and the Squeak swiki, and he's been
> >playing around with it somewhat.  His answer was along the lines of,
> >"so what's the difference between this and giving each team member a
> >copy of frontpage or some similar thing?"
> >
> >Now that you are in the business of selling this stuff, how do you
> >sell it (on features at least)?
>
> At Georgia Tech, we get this question quite frequently.  Our answer
> boils down to two points:
> - FrontPage plus an NT server is a nice Webpage-creation
> solution...for a Windows environment.  Here at Tech, about 30% of the
> students run Linux, almost all the rest run 95/98/NT, about half the
> faculty have Sun or SGI workstations on their desk, and much of the
> other half has Macs.  If I pick a platform, I lose an important
> segment of my potential audience.
> - And even a FrontPage et al. solution doesn't come off nearly as
> nice for collaborative work as a Wiki-like space.  *Your page* is a
> very easy way for me to connect from my space to your space.
>
> Mark

I would add to this list:

- No client software to install, maintain or upgrade
- No server software to install, maintain or upgrade
- The collaborative features: viewing references, searching, history,
annotation, page locking and unlocking, email notification (soon), etc.

If you've ever used FrontPage, you'll quickly discover that it's not the
sort of thing the average person is likely to want to deal with.  A Swiki is
not simply about easily creating a web page.

- Stephen