On Saturday, October 22, 2011 11:14:50 AM, Eric Myers wrote: > On Sat, 22 Oct 2011, Sean Dague wrote: > >> That's what we did. It worked for the most part, but may not match > >> the group dynamic you are dealing with. > > > > When working with non-technical non-profits, I've also found you really > > need to invest in face to face training. Figuring out how tech works is > > only interesting to a subset of people, so being able to walk people > > through things (probably multiple times) goes a long way to helping > > adoption. > > Yes, and there is a fear factor involved -- the fear that it will be too > hard, or too complicated, or too time consuming, or too confusing. Having > a demonstration of how easy it is, or simple (at least for basic tasks) > and/or showing them that the complexity is limited to certain things (that > perhaps someone else can take care of) can help. Once the entire scope > is in sight, the fear of the unknown size of the issue can abate. > > But not in all cases. My own mother won't listen to what I tell her, > because the fear factor remains no matter what I say; because it's really > anything I do that is complex or too confusing (from her point of view). > My wife has a similar problem with her parents, so we have a deal that we > each help the other's parents with their computer problems, because the > in-laws will listen when the parents sometimes won't.
At least for family, what I do to try to counteract these fears is to repeatedly encourage them to experiement, and to try new programs and new parts of the sytem that they find out about. I let them know not to be afraid, because there is probably nothing that they could do during this that I couldn't fix. These suggestions seem to help. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Nov 2 - POV-Ray and The Relativity Train Dec 7 - An Intro to Chef Jan 4 - Recovering the Brownfield: Revitalizing Open Source Projects
