[FM Discuss] Beyond manuals

Wed Apr 8 13:53:46 PDT 2009

ok,

you want to take the lead in this John? that means doing some writing,
convincing others to contribute...

if so, give me a nod and tell me the name of the manual and I will set
it up

adam

On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 06:59 +1200, John & Melonie Curwood wrote:
> Hi Adam,
> 
> I think this is a great idea, an intro to what does what, how it is 
> useful and testimonials could be aligned with relavant chapters (e.g. I 
> use open office Calc because..., I use open office writer..., open 
> office impress..., you could even include I use evolution because... and 
> I use gnucash because... if it were to include the full range of 
> office/business admin tools)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> John
> 
> 
> adam hyde wrote:
> > 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
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Discuss mailing list
> >>> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> >>> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Discuss mailing list
> >> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> >> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
> >>     
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals

"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about