Hi, Christian replies:
Ian, it would be interesting to see what these FLOSSies are doing with their old hardware. I found that I was not having a whole lot of success trying to get people to try just the software (OOo) itself. Either people had a computer with Microsoft Office, and were not interested in switching, or they had no computer, and so it was irrelevant to their lives if OOo existed or not. I have had much better luck getting people to consider FLOSS and OOo if they had a box sitting in front of them. That's just me personally, and probably only in North America and Europe and among more developed regions in the rest of the world. However, here in SF, there are lots and lots of people living below the poverty line. There is also one church and one school that I am currently working with to get them to try FLOSS boxes. As you folks know, I have been working on getting actual migrations for quite a while now, and it really takes lots and lots of work from my experience. My goal right now for my work in San Francisco is to find just one or two groups here or there, and nurture them with computers. Provide them with traning. Train some trainers. Very much like what Ian Lynch is doing with INGOTs, except I don't have any formal certificates as does Ian. Currently, I have one church in the East Bay (Berkeley) that is interested in getting computers. I don't have a car, and neither do the folks to whom I am giving computers, and so we have to find people with cars, since it is too hard to take monitors on public transportation. I am going to be getting some computers from a friend tomorrow night, and I will take those boxes, along with a monitor, and I have some spare printers (not sure if they work) and we are going to give that set up to a 25 year-old guy who is working with the church. Hopefully, he will stick with it, and then teach others in the church. We will also give computers to the church directly. I am also working with a school near my home to put in a computer lab. The lab will have Mac, Windows, and (hopefully) GNU/Linux. The big problem that I have encountered is training. People get discouraged easily. If the computer doesn't work perfectly out of the box, people will often give up. People blame the software if it is not exactly like Microsoft or Apple. They think that because it is free, it either sucks or it is stolen. People will accept virus-ridden Microsoft problems because better the devil you know than the devil you don't. They're afraid of something new. FLOSS therefore really seems to have a higher burden in terms of gaining acceptance. This is exactly what Bhaskar Chakravorti explains in his book, "The Slow Pace of Fast Change." Established technologies have the benefit of the expectation that they are the standard. People are continuing to use Microsoft products because people use Microsoft products. It's the chicken and the egg problem. There are lots of kids involved in the youth program at the church, and obviously with the school, too. So I am hoping that we will be able to train kids and new adult users whose expectations aren't focused on Microsoft. Coincidentally, I also tend to install Xandros Linux on these boxes wherever possible, simply because it has a good Windows theme that looks like Windows. A tax law professor of mine in law school said that 95% of tax law is window dressing. If it looks good, people will buy it. In other words, Windows has become a symbol of trust. Humans are highly responsive to symbols. We live in a symbolic, analog world. We trust athletes to sell us watches and shoes and golf hats because we know their faces and we want to be like them. Solveig Haugland once mentioned on this list that her clients would freak out if the open file button is moved a centimeter to the left or the right. I'm really starting to see the truth in that statement. It's amazing the short attention spans of the people that I deal with. I'm not insulting them, it's just that their lives are so busy that they have little time to sit down and learn something new, because they have kids to feed, appointments to keep, and they have very little time and money to do something as simple as go to a movie or spend time with their spouses. If you put them through changes, you won't get them to migrate. New users are a different experience altogether. So that's why I'm targeting adults who don't have computers, and kids, who are often willing to learn, as long as the computer is in a supervised environment. I've had the experience that the kids will tear the mice apart and otherwise destroy the machines if they are left in a poorly supervised situation, as with the first school that I was working with. Also, poorly supervised kids are often poorly motivated. Again, short attention spans. California slashed its tax base in 1978 with Proposition 13. At that time, California's education system was first or second in the nation. Now only Arkansas is behind us. And you can really see it in the schools. These kids have little respect; they admire thuggish behavior such as exhibited by some rap artists; they are content to be thrown out of class so that they can lounge on the benches in the school yard; they pour what little paint they have in art classes into unlocked file drawers when the teacher is not looking, which is most of the time from what I can see of these teachers, who just don't give a damn and only want to collect a paycheck and count the days until summer vacation. The strength of open source really comes back to community on the end user side, as well as on the developer side. We really need to establish communities of end users who will support and encourage each other and teach each other how to use the software, and motivate each other to continue to try. When I first came onto this list about 4 years ago, I was pumped about guerilla marketing. I would talk to people on buses, trains, and planes and I would carry CDs around and give them out. I still do that to a lesser degree, and instead, now I focus my time on finding teachers to teach. Again, this is just like Ian Lynch's model with INGOTs. The more work that I do in trying to get people to migrate, the more I like Ian Lynch's ideas. The really crucial part of INGOTs is the community service aspect of the certificates. In other words, success in migrating people to FLOSS IMHO seems to be all about three words: community, community, community. And it's the same for hardware. Sharing the code is easy, but the obstacle is often the hardware. Ian, I would be interested to see if you would be able to get feedback for me from this FLOSSie conference about DIYparts.org. We do have people exchanging hardware in the UK, and we will soon start adding cities and towns to our DIYparts.org website, so that people can specify more narrowly where they are. I would like to see if we could get people at that FLOSSie con interested in testing DIYparts.org. If you feel like mentioning it to them, showing it to them, and making mental notes of their reactions, I would be much obliged. Thanks either way. Christian Einfeldt 415-351-1300 http://www.DIYparts.org Ian wrote: The UK Free Libre Open Source Software in Education Conference takes place on July 14th and 15th. OpenOffice.org will feature strongly so if you are in the vicinity consider joining us or pass the word to anyone you know that might want to attend. Details are at http://www.schoolforge.org.uk/flossie/conference200507.html -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMSL --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
