Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Roll-out, retraining, perceptions Re: [libreoffice-users] Do You Share ODF Documents With MS Office Users?

Hi everybody and a very good morning to you Tom,

I do agree that it is (and it feels very much like) an uphill struggle
but I also believe that it's a well known fact that people, in general,
have a strong tendency to stick to whatever their existing habits
already are. This is just a psychological kind of "jail" (hmmm....it
reminds me of Free BSD :-), which prevents people from making that
little extra step and change to something new!

So, at the end of the day, it may be that important things (i.e. quality
of the source code, efficiency of the software, nice 'n easy GUI, etc),
do NOT count as much, as other more trivial "humble" things, like that
IT staff are "a little lazy" and do not wish to look after a new
programme... or that the single user is simply "afraid" as somebody will
have "to teach an old dog new tricks"...

Being myself an assiduous user of Libo, I do know that LibreOffice is
equally capable (if not even more!) of accomplishing the same tasks that
MS Office does. So, since we have a very good software in our hands, the
main thing is to promote it "out there" and just inform people about its
existence, its features and gradually the conversion rate will nicely
increase. Personally, I think that the strong example-setting role of
all Public Administration offices, suggests that our efforts should
particularly go to convince the decision makers to adopt Libo in any (if
not all!) Public Sector setting.

Have a nice day

Constantine Mousafiris

P.S.
Oh yes! One last thing: we are very happy, here in Greece, to carry on
with this continuous effort in support of free software technologies
like LIbo, and we do feel particularly honoured that you made a mention
of it in your message. But I would just like to clarify that the
achievements we eventually get, are NOT due to any single "chap in
Greece", but to an entire Association called GreekLUG
<http://tinyurl.com/ctgz5bm> and to the concerted efforts of all its
members  :-)

??? 08/08/2012 11:27 ??, ?/? Tom Davies ??????:
> Hi :)  
> Is LO really free?  
>
> Roll-out costs.  
> One advantage of LTS (=Long Term Support) or the slow plodding pace of MS (with many years 
> between releases) is that roll-out costs and the time involved is only incurred every few years, 
> rather than every month or so.  Are there ever likely to be any plans to address this?  
>
> Perceptions and re-training
> People still seem to think that LO is going to be difficult for people to learn how to use 
> despite it's similarity to MS Office 2003 menus.  Somehow people/managers still seem to think 
> that upgrading from one version of MSO to another or from Xp to Win7 or Win8 is going to be 
> trivially easy.  After all it's all still MS right?  and MS is easy right?  (Wrong on both counts 
> but that often still seems to be the perception).  
>
>
> The marketing teams and individuals such as the chap in Greece are doing a great job of changing 
> people's perceptions but it's a constant "up hill" struggle.  The more we can get LO out there 
> and being seen and talked about the more the perception can be turned around.  Firefox managed it 
> but awareness about LO seems to have grown faster, perhaps partly due to being able to point to 
> FF as a similar project but mostly just because of the hard work put in by people here.  
>
> I keep hearing that  the biggest blockers are to do with stability and roll-out costs, and lack 
> of an LTS but we have no control over those things.  
>
> We hear stories of this&that organisation that has realised about potential savings on licensing 
> fees which is great but we are setting-up a scenario when in a couple of years those same 
> organisations switch back to MSO, due to the blockers, and become highly vocal about it.  
>
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
>
> --- On Wed, 8/8/12, Jay Lozier <jslozier@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: Jay Lozier <jslozier@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Do You Share ODF Documents With MS Office Users?
> To: users@global.libreoffice.org
> Date: Wednesday, 8 August, 2012, 3:26
>
> On 08/07/2012 08:24 PM, rob wood wrote:
> > > From my experience of working in the IT department of a very large college
> > with over 10 000 computers, it has nothing to do with functionality. 99.9%
> > of employees use office to type letters and send emails. For the .1% that
> > would use advanced features, policy probably disallows them anyway. Plus,
> > it is fairly trivial to have different images for those that need/want them.
> >
> > The reason they don't migrate is because it would create more work for the
> > IT department, it is that simple. Plus there is no benefit as far as the IT
> > department is concerned. Office 2003 works, and whoever approves the budget
> > is just going to accept however much is put in there for it, that is if it
> > is actually a separate item and not bundled in with the other microsoft
> > licences.
> >
> > Office = safe.
> > LO = risky + more work.
> I would second that most users do not use advanced features of any the 
> MSO parts. Very few can actually program/write a macro and macro 
> execution should normally be turned off for security reasons.
>
> The reasons for not updating MSO version or using another office suite 
> (LO, AOO, etc) are roll out costs, roll out time, inertia (no real 
> business reason to change), and perceptions about users finding the new 
> suite difficult to use.
>
> > On 8 August 2012 00:11, Steve Morris <hidden> wrote:
> >
> > > Just my 2 cents worth. Businesses with a heavy investment in office can't
> > > migrate to LO, as LO is not a functional replacement for office 2002, let
> > > alone 2010. A lot of business functionality that is used from day to day
> > > and is critical to the organisation in order for their various business
> > > units to operate, from say excel, that libreoffice does not provide, even
> > > in 3.6, and features that excel allows that Calc disallows (as far as I can
> > > see for no good reason). Another reason for not migrating is also the steep
> > > learning curve, both with front end functionality and macros, that business
> > > cannot afford to undertake due to the loss of time and resources.
> > >
> > > regards,
> > > Steve
>
> Jay Lozier


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