[FM Discuss] Beyond manuals

Tue Apr 7 11:10:32 PDT 2009

it wouldnt take us much to set up a manual to tackle this situation. we
could outline what softwares do what with maybe a chapter a piece. we
dont need to go into how to use the software, but maybe we could include
some testimonials from business people saying 'I use open office
because ...'

what do u think john?

adma

On Tue, 2009-04-07 at 07:07 +1200, John & Melonie Curwood wrote:
> Andy Oram wrote:
> > I've been silent for a couple days, but now I have an evening to answer FM-related mail and start working on the command-line manual again.
> >
> > John's idea below sounds like a really nice project, although a big one. To give businesses enough information about all the tools for them to feel confident they can trust their businesses to free software, you'd have to say a lot about each tool.
> >   
> With regards to businesses needing enough information to feel confident 
> I would say yes and no about needing to say alot for all the tools.  For 
> the software that handles the accounts/inventory/invoicing I would 
> definitely say that something very thorough would be required, when 
> dealling with Money and accurately and securely keeping track of it 
> business owners want assurance that a product will do the job.
> But for the rest, in my experience most business owners think very 
> little about what they use and most have a very small understanding of 
> what they are using.  For example the majority of bosses and managers 
> that I have had would have used MS excel only for making tables, which a 
> spreadsheet is not very good at.compared to the table functions in most 
> word processors.  That is what the see the spreadsheet is good for.
> When talking about an office suite, I think something that would say 
> "Hey OpenSource Software can do everything MS Office can do and it's 
> easy to learn how" would be what is needed.  I think the biggest barrier 
> to implementing a new system is the fact that people don't like change, 
> they don't want to have to learn a new system.  When I first bought a 
> Mac I was so excited about it, I thought the way it worked was really 
> cool, and the fact that it never crashed was fantastic, so I went around 
> all my friends and family preaching the virtues of iMacs and OSX, but 
> whenever they tried using my computer, it always came back to 'it 
> doesn't work the same as windows', 'I can't use the same shortcuts as in 
> windows', etc.  And in the end not one of them converted, they all 
> appreciated the fact that things ran smother on the Mac but were 
> prepared to keep putting up with random crashes and program freezes 
> rather than have to learn a new system. And I think this is one of the 
> major hurdles for getting business to adopt open sourced software, they 
> would rather put up with the same bugs in their current software than 
> have to learn something new.
> Woops sorry about all the exposition, but I think when trying to promote 
> the use of Free Software in a business situation, the emphasis should be 
> on how smooth the transition can be and how easy it is to learn the new 
> software.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> John
> > This reminds me that a few years ago I tried to pull together a book about the value of open source software and open formats (two different but related issues) for government. At first I thought I would propose it at O'Reilly, but we decided we couldn't sell enough copies to make money, so I tried to organize it as a collaborative project covering multiple continents (sound familiar?). That didn't work.
> >
> > It was an advocacy book, not a how-to book, but the goal was similar: to persuade frightened office managers to make the migration.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "John & Melonie Curwood" <marketing at lovinglearning.co.nz>
> > To: discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> > Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 9:36:18 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> > Subject: Re: [FM Discuss] Beyond manuals
> >
> > With regards to an OpenOffice manual, maybe create a doing stuff with 
> > free software manual about running a small business or something which 
> > would include Openoffice, something like mozilla thunderbird/sunbird or 
> > evolution for email/organising and something like gnucash or better (I'm 
> > not familiar with OpenSource Accounting packages) for doing the accounts.
> >
> > I know it is not as exciting as say the digital foundations book, but it 
> > could have quite a wide audience.
> >
> > As some one said earler it would take more that a sprint to put and 
> > Openoffice manual together, more like a marathon, or in this case maybe 
> > a triathlon. :)
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > John
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >   
> 
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