Re: [INFO] Unofficial presentation of the AOO and Educoo projects

2014-02-04 Thread Rob Weir
On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Jürgen Schmidt  wrote:
> On 2/3/14 8:38 PM, Guy Waterval wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I knew this first journey into the world of MS users would be difficult,
>> particularly in my area, but I wouldn't expect a so bad result. The
>> presentation is canceled for a lack of participants. I was informed of the
>> situation very late, a few days before the deadline for registration. I
>> tried myself to recruit people in emergency, but in four days, it  was too
>> short to inverse the tendance.
>> Note that this situation is not representative and has not to be
>> generalized.
>> I will now try another method, without going through "official channels"
>> but contact directly users myself and organize private and free information
>> meetups to attempt to create a small users basis, because I've observed
>> that most MS users are not against OpenOffice in itself, but seem to be
>> more afraid about questions as changes, lack of support, to be isolated,
>> etc. So, in my area, it seems there is a need to have first an intermediate
>> layer of "experienced" users, perhaps organized in an association, between
>> the project and a potential basis of users.
>> So, I will try this way.
>
> advocating OpenOffice against Ms Office is indeed no easy job and yes
> the change of a comfortable work environment to a new one is not easy
> for many users who simply want to do their job without bigger
> preferences to one or the other program. Good luck.
>

>From a practical perspective it is important to realize that with most
changes their are winners and losers.  Some people hate change, some
love it.   If a company is moving from Microsoft to OpenOffice, who
are the natural winners and losers:

Winners: Those who benefit from cost savings, so the owners of the
company.  Those whose departments now have extra money to spend on
other things than MS Office.  Those looking for the opportunity to
advance their careers by driving cost-saving changes.  Those who want
to demonstrate leadership by transforming the company's IT department.

Losers:   Those who fear change, disruption.  Those who identify
themselves and their competency as "Microsoft Office exports" and fear
that this career advantage will be lost.

The trick to adopting OpenOffice is finding your natural allies in the
organization and working with them to address the concerns of those
who fear they will lose by the change.  In the end it is possible for
everyone to win.  But you need a plan for addressing the
constituencies who will naturally fear and resist change.

Regards,

-Rob


> Juergen
>
>
>>
>> A+
>>
>
>
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Re: [INFO] Unofficial presentation of the AOO and Educoo projects

2014-02-04 Thread Guy Waterval
Hi Jürgen,

2014-02-04 Jürgen Schmidt :

>
> advocating OpenOffice against Ms Office is indeed no easy job and yes
> the change of a comfortable work environment to a new one is not easy
> for many users who simply want to do their job without bigger
> preferences to one or the other program. Good luck.
>

Thanks for your answer.

To be honest I never present AOO against MS Office, but as a complement to
MS Office, to open certain files or for a use at home, or with some
extensions, etc. I don't will push people to a radical change, especially
in sensible areas where they could have too many interoperability issues or
in case I know there is locally no structure able to support such a change.
But of course, there are areas in a company where AOO can be viewed as an
excellent alternative, without  inconvenients, and in this case, it's
certainly a good choice to suggest. For instance, I know a MS Office user
(a teacher) who uses only AOO for translations with the Anaphraseus
extension. He will perhaps never change totally  for AOO, and I have no
problem with that. But as we have in CH a lot of users with daily
translation works between French English German and Italian, I know he has
made a demand (no response up to now) for a systematic installation of
AOO+Anaphraseus near MS Office on all the PCs in the Swiss Administration.
The alternative Wordfast for MS Office is certainly more sophisticated but
costs 400 euros pro licence. Another advantage of this "soft" approach is
to give people an opportunity to discover AOO without stress and use it at
home if they will. Also a possible way to enlarge the basis of the users.
 For schools the situation is a little different, OOo4Kids is clearly the
solution for the primary school and AOO the best free solution for students
after 12 years. In this area a more "combative" attitude is suitable, I
find.

A+
-- 
gw

>
>
>


Re: [INFO] Unofficial presentation of the AOO and Educoo projects

2014-02-04 Thread Jürgen Schmidt
On 2/3/14 8:38 PM, Guy Waterval wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I knew this first journey into the world of MS users would be difficult,
> particularly in my area, but I wouldn't expect a so bad result. The
> presentation is canceled for a lack of participants. I was informed of the
> situation very late, a few days before the deadline for registration. I
> tried myself to recruit people in emergency, but in four days, it  was too
> short to inverse the tendance.
> Note that this situation is not representative and has not to be
> generalized.
> I will now try another method, without going through "official channels"
> but contact directly users myself and organize private and free information
> meetups to attempt to create a small users basis, because I've observed
> that most MS users are not against OpenOffice in itself, but seem to be
> more afraid about questions as changes, lack of support, to be isolated,
> etc. So, in my area, it seems there is a need to have first an intermediate
> layer of "experienced" users, perhaps organized in an association, between
> the project and a potential basis of users.
> So, I will try this way.

advocating OpenOffice against Ms Office is indeed no easy job and yes
the change of a comfortable work environment to a new one is not easy
for many users who simply want to do their job without bigger
preferences to one or the other program. Good luck.

Juergen


> 
> A+
> 


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Re: [INFO] Unofficial presentation of the AOO and Educoo projects

2014-02-03 Thread Guy Waterval
Hi all,

I knew this first journey into the world of MS users would be difficult,
particularly in my area, but I wouldn't expect a so bad result. The
presentation is canceled for a lack of participants. I was informed of the
situation very late, a few days before the deadline for registration. I
tried myself to recruit people in emergency, but in four days, it  was too
short to inverse the tendance.
Note that this situation is not representative and has not to be
generalized.
I will now try another method, without going through "official channels"
but contact directly users myself and organize private and free information
meetups to attempt to create a small users basis, because I've observed
that most MS users are not against OpenOffice in itself, but seem to be
more afraid about questions as changes, lack of support, to be isolated,
etc. So, in my area, it seems there is a need to have first an intermediate
layer of "experienced" users, perhaps organized in an association, between
the project and a potential basis of users.
So, I will try this way.

A+
-- 
gw


2013-12-07 Guy Waterval :

> Hi all,
>
> I have the opportunity to make an unofficial presentation of the AOO and
> Educoo projects in Switzerland.
>
> www.softenpoche.com/sep/AOO100214.pdf
>
> The presentation will be held in the installations of a new AOO user :-)
>
>
> http://www.restaurant-hotel-fribourg.com/hotel-pas-cher-marly-fribourg-suisse-restaurant-italien.html
>
> A+
> --
> gw
>
>