On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Jürgen Schmidt <jogischm...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 2/3/14 8:38 PM, Guy Waterval wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> I knew this first journey into the world of MS users would be difficult, >> particularly in my area, but I wouldn't expect a so bad result. The >> presentation is canceled for a lack of participants. I was informed of the >> situation very late, a few days before the deadline for registration. I >> tried myself to recruit people in emergency, but in four days, it was too >> short to inverse the tendance. >> Note that this situation is not representative and has not to be >> generalized. >> I will now try another method, without going through "official channels" >> but contact directly users myself and organize private and free information >> meetups to attempt to create a small users basis, because I've observed >> that most MS users are not against OpenOffice in itself, but seem to be >> more afraid about questions as changes, lack of support, to be isolated, >> etc. So, in my area, it seems there is a need to have first an intermediate >> layer of "experienced" users, perhaps organized in an association, between >> the project and a potential basis of users. >> So, I will try this way. > > advocating OpenOffice against Ms Office is indeed no easy job and yes > the change of a comfortable work environment to a new one is not easy > for many users who simply want to do their job without bigger > preferences to one or the other program. Good luck. >
>From a practical perspective it is important to realize that with most changes their are winners and losers. Some people hate change, some love it. If a company is moving from Microsoft to OpenOffice, who are the natural winners and losers: Winners: Those who benefit from cost savings, so the owners of the company. Those whose departments now have extra money to spend on other things than MS Office. Those looking for the opportunity to advance their careers by driving cost-saving changes. Those who want to demonstrate leadership by transforming the company's IT department. Losers: Those who fear change, disruption. Those who identify themselves and their competency as "Microsoft Office exports" and fear that this career advantage will be lost. The trick to adopting OpenOffice is finding your natural allies in the organization and working with them to address the concerns of those who fear they will lose by the change. In the end it is possible for everyone to win. But you need a plan for addressing the constituencies who will naturally fear and resist change. Regards, -Rob > Juergen > > >> >> A+ >> > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org
