From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Web Service Lets You Say What You'd Pay for Computing Ans
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 09:46:01 -0500
Computing Questions? A Web Service Lets You Say What You'd Pay for Answers
By KELLY McCOLLUM
No matter how many reference manuals, instruction booklets, and FAQ's you
have, the quickest answer for a technical question often comes from a shout
to the geek next door.
That's the idea behind Question Exchange (http://www.questionexchange.com/),
a Web-based matchmaking service that is a sort of eBay for computer gurus,
where people with technical questions indicate how much they're willing to
pay for answers. Its creators say the service may help colleges and
universities caught short on technology-support staff.
A techie having trouble configuring a mail server or debugging a program,
for example, can post the problem on the Web site, where other experts can
lend a hand. Along with each problem, the user says how much he or she is
willing to pay for an answer. The user may also leave the price open and let
respondents bid on the job. Question Exchange then handles the payment and
takes a 5-per-cent fee.
"One way to look at it is as a massively parallel machine answering
technical-support questions," says Hector Gonzalez, the company's founder
and chief executive. "Millions of experts from around the world looking at
your problems in parallel may make any problem trivial."
The Web site is open to anyone who is willing to pay for answers. And anyone
can serve as an expert, by submitting to a continuing certification process.
Question Exchange would be particularly useful for colleges and
universities, says Stephen Bayle, president of the company, which plans to
offer versions of the service tailored to specific campuses.
Because the typical university is home to a wide variety of technological
activities -- specialized software crunching numbers in administrative
systems, Web servers offering course pages in every department, student
machines running every known operating system -- it's unlikely that an
institution's support staff will have a ready answer to every possible
question.
"There are so many technologies, and idiosyncrasies about the integration of
those technologies, that only through experience are you going to be able to
get the solutions to those problems," says Richard E. Mickool, chief
information officer at Babson College.
A service like Question Exchange provides a way for an institution to widen
its knowledge base and better handle all those idiosyncrasies, he says.
"You've really just extended my staff, which is what I need to do."
Technology administrators like Mr. Mickool have found it increasingly hard
to hire and keep technical-staff members, who can often make more money in
the corporate world. "For institutions that have real problems maintaining a
strong technical-support group, this kind of service could be very useful,"
says Kenneth M. King, a former president of the educational-technology group
EDUCOM who has consulted for Question Exchange.
"At a lot of institutions, there are two or three staff positions unfilled,
because they've been unable to attract the right kind of talent to fill
them," he says. "They might use some of those funds to use this service."
The company itself goes further, pitching its service as a tool to aid
institutions in running their help desks.
The plan, says Mr. Bayle, is to create a walled-off area of the Question
Exchange site for users at a particular college or university. Within that
area, technical-staff members, system administrators, and users could ask
and answer questions about their own campus's technology at no charge.
Answered questions would be put into a data base where other users could
refer to them later.
If a question stumped the on-campus techies, it would get pushed out into
the public exchange, where other experts could bid on it -- with the
institution paying the fee.
Universities could specify that answers to questions they sent to the
service end up in a free data base, which would then be used by other
institutions having similar technology problems, Mr. Bayle adds. That makes
sense, he says, because academe is "a collaborative, non-competitive
market."
The company's plan would seem to fit in well with the existing culture of
campus technology, says Mr. King, the consultant. "Colleges and universities
have a strong informal network, he says. "People meet at conferences and get
to know each other, and when there's a problem, they call or exchange
e-mail."
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Copyright 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education