On Fri, 2005-07-08 at 06:55 -0400, Steven Shelton wrote: > > That's why I really think we need to push the compatibility, stability, > the fact that it has been adopted by entire governments, and the fact > that it can save them substantial money while actually AVOIDING the word > "free".
Our approach was "You haven't heard of OOo?" Have you heard of MSO? - Yes? OOo is just like MSO except its free. "What's the catch?" "There isn't one" then explanation of how everything works. Free is an attention grabber. Its Ok as long as you get the opportunity to explain how and why. We then led on from this to INGOTs if they seemed interested. Maybe we would have been better starting with INGOTs. Dunno, that was the way we did it and it seemed to work. > I've been doing a lot of promotion of OOo with some of my > clients, at school, and with business people I know, and the first > comment I get is always "I've always used Windows" (literally, they > don't understand the difference between the OS and the word processor), > the second is "I don't want to take the time to learn something new," > and the third is (almost) always "I have to send my files to people and > I have to use Microsoft format." If those are the end users, talking > about something as obscure (to them) as open standards is like lecturing > on string theory. I said " If you write a letterin MS Word and send it to me as an E-mail attachment, I can Open it in OOo edit it and send it back to you and you won't know I didn't do it in Word." Give them a concrete eg. > Don't know that I have a real point here except that this is a great > illustration of the problem. My solution lately has been to give it to > clients when they start talking about buying a computer for their kids. > They seem more than happy to put something they're skeptical about on > the kiddie computer because (I think) they assume the kids will crash > the whole thing anyway. The hope is that when the kids get used to it, > they'll convert the parents. Whatever works, that is the thing to do :-) -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMSL --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
