We had the opportunity to interview two gardens located at local businesses in one day; and I have to say they were both super helpful and organized. The people we surveyed were really easy to talk to, responsive to our questions, and seemed genuinely interested in helping with the project. I have to follow-up with them by email because they needed to gather some missing information from suppliers and gardeners but at least they knew who they needed to talk to and were willing to share the information when they got it.
We tried the tablet again, but it was not a great success. It is just too slow if you don’t use the full computer keyboard (so not really an effective tablet). It is disappointing, but the computer with the SIM card is still a useful tool for all the interviews we do inside as we can type directly into the online survey. The purchase is not a complete waste (thank god). Still, when using the computer to input responses during the survey, I find myself needing to sit down with the answers afterwards, and review and complete them. For example, when we took a tour of one of the roof-top gardens, we were not longer “filling-out” the survey but still getting general information about the garden. We talked about who uses the garden and it seemed like a good idea to add all that the information into the “supplemental information” section of the survey questions. I thus had to go back into the survey answers and add information.
In between the two business garden meetings, I went to the launch of the new Agriculture Montreal web platform. I was able to do one private garden survey and schedule two other surveys. All and all a pretty productive day.
Sustainable Resource Management Lab 