I've sent him some info to get them started (basics: white paper, trade data, Wiki articles/calculators on mining, list of merchants, 'weusecoins.com', etc).
Better to just leave mining out.+1
Unfortunately, verification is crucial to the system. Oh, and if they've heard of bitcoin, they've heard of mining. Go into detail on verification and difficulty, but gloss over the coinbase transaction as a trivial reward.