On 11/14/06, Lev Lafayette wrote:

On Mon, 2006-11-13 at 18:25 -0500, Joe Zitnik wrote:

...

You underestimate people.

I work in an enterprise with less than a thousand people. Because of those people, we went from a Word Perfect shop to a MS Office shop. Why, because they ran it at home. People see Microsoft advertising everywhere, and that's what drives their decisions. I'd wager no one, and I mean no one, at our organization has ever heard of Ubuntu, or most any other flavor of Linux. Worse yet, the CEOs haven't either. Do you think they run MS because it's technically superior? To the contrary, MS failings are widely publicized, and it's STILL dominant. You expect those people to choose Linux?

Just for the record, when Linux Users Victoria did their Software Freedom Day walk around Melbourne handing out Ubuntu CDs, not only were people aware of Linux, they were also aware of Ubuntu as a distribution.

Maybe that's just Melbourne, but I think it's more general. So I'll take you up on your wager. Gentleman's bet of course. Run a survey of your less than 1,000 people and I bet you $1 that, apart from yourself, someone has heard of Ubuntu.

Ball in your court,

People have heard of Linux. But people like their computers to work all the time and they really like it even more when the computer does no change on them. Regular joe user gets heart palpitations when the "web browser" icon that launchers their web browsers gets moved from the top left to the top right hand of the screen. They really don't like it when their entire system does a 180 degree turn on them that they didn't ask for. People are creatures of habit and they like what they are used to. -- jjgitties, "*We* need to convince OpenSUSE to fork, or let 'em die. To bad, it is a wonderful Distro. But their parent company is NOT our friend."

On 11/14/06, JB wrote:

When does this stuff happen?

It all starts to happen once you start getting paid to proffessionally support customers with their computer problems. They develop the attitude of ,"well, why should I waste my time with this. I will call support and have that guy show me. After all that's, what they are paid to do." And thats where you enter the world of, no matter how many instruction manuals or HOWTO's or how many sysadmin e-mals you send, the staff will not read it. They will almost always usually call you to do it for them. And this is one of the big obstacles in supporting a user base that didn't want to convert, but you converted them because you think it's the better way. There will be training. You are going to get a lot of, "I can't do my work, I am going home" and you will get shit on by the managers of those departments because they will start asking why their staff used to be able to work and now they can't do their work". And what are the reason for this change. And if you try to make the case of, "well, they don't know how to use a computer", you will get shit on even more becuase manglers don't care about what you think about their staff. All they care about is that their staff can perform the jobs they were hired to do. And you changed something and you are the cause that the staff can't do their job. Meaning the staff member has every right to bitch about what you did. Thats why it's always very very important to have management backing and a "project champion" before you decide to implement a technology that you think "rocks" and will be better for the company. For all the non pro's, who may not know what a project champion is, it's someone who is well connected, well versed and intergrated into the business, they understand the politics involved, they understand the who is who in the business, that are better at convincing people to do things than you are and it helps if they are a little tech savvy. You need to get one of those people to believe in what you are doing and get them to convince the people that matter that this is the better way. Thats the path to a smooth tech revolution. :-) -- jjgitties, "*We* need to convince OpenSUSE to fork, or let 'em die. To bad, it is a wonderful Distro. But their parent company is NOT our friend."

Hi, On Tuesday 14 November 2006 11:13, John Andersen wrote:

...

Never touch the keyboard or mouse while teaching people a new system. Make them drive. Make them open documents. Make them send email.

I think this is very good advice. It accomplishes two things: 1) The user learns much better how to accomplish something because they're involved in it. This reinforces learning much better than being told and even better than being shown. 2) The support / administrator / educator learns how their model of an application or a system differs from that of the users they support. This allows them to better understand those users and give them what they need, whether it's better instruction or better documentation or better selection of software from which to choose. It's akin to good user testing (perhaps a misnomer, 'cause it's not the user being tested, but rather their interaction with the software), where you let the user work with your application. The person administering these tests does not help the user, but only encourages the user to verbalize what they're thinking as they attempt to accomplish some task. In the personal computing world, Apple is the pioneer and king of this kind of testing, and that's why their software is almost always much more usable than anyone else's.

...

Randall Schulz --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 14 November 2006 10:36, JJ Gitties wrote:

The point of the post was users aren't as open to changes as one would expect. If anything. they might be a lot less open then you would expect.

While that is true, it can largely be headed off at the pass by just a little explanation and listening to what they are really saying and what their concerns really are. People are not as afraid of change as it seems. They just hate the feeling of incompetence they acquire with something new. I had this old geezer as a pro-bono client. Got tired of him bringing his virus laden computer in every few weeks because he could not resist clicking any link anyone sent him. Converted him to to Linux,and kde, after much discussion. I initially didn't understand his attachment to Outlook Express, He lived in that one application. All his friends were in there. He had archived discussions going back years in carefully constructed folders within folders. He could handle the new web browsers, the new document processors, etc. He had been thru several version changes on windows already. He even agreed to pry his fingers loose of their deathgrip on Zone Alarm, Spybot, Norton Antivirus, and Diskkeeper (defragger), which were his security blanket in windows. But Outlook Express was his home. Once I understood THAT, I used the Kmail Importer to suck all his mail in from his old drive (which he keeps around for dual boot to play games on windows). Kmail sucked it all in and perfectly replicated his structure exactly. That mattered more than anything else. And he couldn't be happier. But I had to make it a game for him. I had pointed out it was just like exploring that big culvert under the highway as a child, it was going to be scary, but new and wonderful at the same time. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen