Quirkos launch workshop
This week we had our official launch event for Quirkos, a workshop at the Institute of Education in London, but hosted by the University of Surrey CAQDAS network. It was a great event, with tea and cake
It was a great event, with tea and cake, and more than 30 people turning up on the day. Participants learnt about the philosophy behind Quirkos, how it fits in with the other qualitative analysis software packages on the market, and got an extensive interactive workshop session. We got some great feedback from participants, who seemed really enthusiastic about the potential for using Quirkos in their research, and lots of new ideas to take the project forward.
It is always invaluable to get feedback from new users, and the questions and suggestions raised will all be taken to heart in the next few months, helping us to improve our training and support, and add new features to make working with qualitative data even easier. Inevitably we also found a bug with creating new sources in the Mac version, and we are hoping to have a fix for this by the end of next week.
It was also a good time for reflection, with Quirkos now having been available for two months now. Interest has been amazing, and we already have customers from the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia, and have exceeded the number of licences we expected to sell at this stage! However, this is just the beginning, and in the new year Quirkos will be growing, allowing us to offer a better service and more rapid improvements. We are moving into new offices, staying in Edinburgh, but moving down to the port of Leith, right on the sea front. We will also bring on new staff to focus on the commercial and market research sectors, and help us be better focused for users with different needs.
It's also interesting how enthusiastic people have been about the participatory opportunities which they can envisage using Quirkos, and this is going to be a major focus for us. We are going to start some open-data community projects in the new year, that will provide some great examples of how Quirkos can help participants get engaged with research.
Keep watching this space in the new year for more information about our move, and to introduce the new faces who will be joining Quirkos HQ!