Django is being used by corporations worldwide.  Every day, Imaginary does its part to increase this footprint by deploying Django websites and applications to our clients. As a result, Django is being exposed to greater numbers of end users.

I'm not talking end user developers.  I'm talking Samantha in marketing who needs to add a blog post, or Tom in HR who needs to find a new hire.  Regular, everyday people trying to get their jobs done.

Yet, nearly every bit of instructional material is geared toward developers.  And when help is offered to end users, it is often steeped in confusing technical language.  Take for example, slugs.

Slugs are the path portion of the website address, e.g. (http://www.website.com/this-is-a-slug/ but few outside of the programming community know this.  However, it is important to end users because it aids in readability and search engine optimization.  Using this technical term without a clear explanation can be confusing and cause frustration.  

This is an example of the words we use in our industry.  Every industry has its specialized terms and acronyms. If you played soccer, for example, you'd know what the term "pitch" means as well as the acronyms DOGSO or DFK.  But if you don't play soccer, you probably don't know - nor should you.  The same holds true to non-technical users of the Django web framework.

Those in marketing, accounting, customer service or retail for example should not be expected to know what a slug is or that URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator or any of the countless industry-specific buzzwords we use.  If the tools we create are meant for end users, then we owe it to them to make their use simple and our help helpful.  

In an effort to address this problem, Imaginary Landscape has started to produce instructional materials specifically for end users. The first set of materials are video tutorials focusing on the popular (and super cool) django CMS.  We've been a big fan of django CMS for some time. We  have utilized it in many corporate installations, and  have created end user materials along the way.  We've polished, genericized and with the effort of our narrator Lisa King, published the first videos for the public.

We plan on continuing the initiative with many more video releases scheduled in the upcoming weeks and months.  It is our hope that this contribution will assist in introducing the wonderful collection of Django tools to a wider audience and help with its continued success.   

"Any darn fool can make something complex;  it takes a genius to make something simple." - Pete Seeger