Mastodawn

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@kim_harding/116189938186518281

Great! 👍 But look, guys, even if you maybe don't want to directly badmouth Microsoft, you don't have to keep pretending that most people prefer it.

Yes, there'll be minor switching abrasion; familiarity is a strong motivator - but I assure you, the number of users who *want to* work in MS Office or Windows is well witin a single-digit percentage.

- which also means feel free to improve on the experience. "We're not Big Tech" is not your only selling point.

#privacy #OpenSource #QuitBigTech

bert hubert 🇺🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦Mar 8

@jwcph I do a ton of talks on this subject. People are very attached to their working environment and even if they are unhappy with Teams or Word or Outlook, they also overwhelmingly don’t want change if they can stop it. Your single digit number is very much not what I observe.

@bert_hubert @jwcph as a former Microsoft customer facing engineer, I can back this up. Changing tools is incredibly painful for orgs, just in terms of training and Skilling. We held sessions that would last a whole week just for technical people on how to use new tools, and that process would always require follow up training and reinforcement for technical people. For non technical people this is even more pointed. Doing migrations to or from Teams, which no one loves, was and still is a laborious and slogging process, something that takes months or longer. Changing systems is hard, and without mandates and top level support, is extremely hard.

🇪🇺 Paul Schoonhoven 🍋🍉Mar 8

@tstruthers @bert_hubert @jwcph

That ia a lesson the open source / linux community has to learn.

That means that it is very important to be able to implement versions with enough look&feel to make transitions easier.

(In other words: you want to be able to drive through the software as if it is the same sort of car.)

@vosje62 @bert_hubert @jwcph agreed, look feel and functionality is important. I would say not changing to Linux in my career has been driven but changes to familiarity of interfaces and management for me more than anything but the gap and knowledge on that has shrunk significantly. The key thing though, that I've seen over and over again is, you cannot change orgs tech stack's from the engineer level.

Nerds get how to transition, as I said even when we do understand it that process can still take months. Security initiatives, like most tech initiatives fail, because there is no executive buy in. Not just from the CIO or CISO, but from the CFO and CEO. These are hard to gain traction without showing both limited business disruption and increased value, but also with a coupling of regulation and law.

Ultimately for Europe to kick the big tech habit, it has to include thought leadership, which I appreciate Bert leading well, and also resilience regulation. At minimum we need to be having a discussion of where our data is held, what do we do if we lose access, and how does that impact our business resilience. I like that this conversation is gaining traction, but it still feels like it's missing in most board rooms.

🇪🇺 Paul Schoonhoven 🍋🍉Mar 8

@tstruthers @bert_hubert @jwcph

It will make it to the board rooms the day trump orders visa/MasterCard to stop dealings with that company or the moment they get hit by the fall out.
A board room wants to get a job done and don't want to think about it more than absolutely necessary.

It will just take time. Some are earlier adapters then others. Some transitions will take much longer.

Don't forget there is a large difference between now and 'before Trump'. That won't leave with Trump.

@vosje62 @bert_hubert @jwcph I think this is a very salient point

Angela Scholder Mar 9

@tstruthers @vosje62 @bert_hubert @jwcph I had a look at office dot eu yesterday, but way too many red flags.
Seems like just very good marketing with a perfect domain name.

James Tinmouth Mar 8

@tstruthers @vosje62 @bert_hubert @jwcph except this is all a fiction.

I agree entirely with the sentiment but MS changes the game completley with every 2-3 releases anyway.

Start bar, the ribbon, constant pushing to save in onedrive, task bar to dock, IE to edge to new edge, teams refocus on "updates", conversations in outlook, complete binning of UIs for a new one (outlook, whiteboard) on and on it goes.

Moving the UI around to confuse the shit out of the users is the modus operandi of MS, and if we're saying there's intertia because people are familiar with it, that just can't be correct. At best it must be that decision makers THINK their users are familiar with it.

In my honest and considered opinion ofc!

What some competitor would be best to do is create 3-4 modes of what the UI looks like, that correlate to different generation of MS apps, and provide a clear and easy way of selecting the appropriate one.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Mar 8

@tinmouth @tstruthers @vosje62 @bert_hubert Thank you, that's better put than anything I could have said 😁

🇪🇺 Paul Schoonhoven 🍋🍉Mar 8

@tinmouth @tstruthers @bert_hubert @jwcph

I left to Linux at the end of Win7.. I think it was clear why when you can remember what came next ...

... And apparently they never learned from it. 🙈

bert hubert 🇺🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦Mar 8

@tinmouth @tstruthers @vosje62 @jwcph I can assure you that people in normal workplaces hate Microsoft and the changes but still don’t want more change. “Better the devil you know”. You are fooling yourself if you think people will be receptive to disruption.

vandefiets Mar 8

@bert_hubert @tinmouth @tstruthers @vosje62 @jwcph so it is all just about the user interface?

Nichol Brummer Mar 8

@vandefiets @bert_hubert @tinmouth @tstruthers @vosje62 @jwcph it is like languages: if you speak one foreign language, a second one becomes a lot easier.

Even getting groups to move from whatsapp to signal helps a lot. People learn than alternatives can work.

@vandefiets @bert_hubert @tinmouth @tstruthers @vosje62 @jwcph

The user interface is just one hurdle among many

vandefiets Mar 8

@Zamfr @bert_hubert @tinmouth @tstruthers @vosje62 @jwcph well, not for the users, if the interface is a good one

@vandefiets @bert_hubert @tinmouth @vosje62 @jwcph You've got layered issues with most corps.

1). Cost of switching (the CFO cares about this, and the CIO saving in the budget potentially). Liicensing is mostly what I mean here.

2). Training users and IT staffing

3) integration of existing tools, this includes management tools and monitoring and also LOB apps

4). Regulatory requirements. This can be burdensome for self hosted tools if staffing or compliance has shortages (most mid orgs do).

5). Supply chain integration, this includes sharing of documents, repositories, and automation

6). Tool switching friction, especially for C suite. Email is a huge example, I could talk to this for hours.

7). Juniors and seniors friction in support staff, this is a huge challenge in all potential migrations. Seniors may want to adopt a tool, as it's well adopted for senior skilled staff, but juniors do most of the day to day work in that tool, I've seen so many migrations fail due to this.

8). Vendor support. Open source projects can be huge challenges because so many times the expectations are, We are short staffed, we have a maintenance contract, open a ticket. Self supported can make this a challenge

Migrations a nightmare for any mid to large org, again, if it's not driven or adopted from the top, the beast we know is better. It's why MS and others push so hard for long term contracts and offer such a large discounts for those who do, that lock in is the goal

@bert_hubert @tinmouth @tstruthers @vosje62 @jwcph After one change to FOSS, the organization can then fix underlying issues without visible changes to user interfaces. This is impossible in proprietary software where you march to the beat of your software vendor. Tail wagging the dog.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Mar 8

@vosje62 @tstruthers @bert_hubert Well... yes - to a point. You're not going to change over to that new car that feels the same, if it also runs you straight into the exact same wall.

The switching costs can be lowered by emulating the experience, but that doesn't mean you have to include & conserve every single thing that sucks, too.

@jwcph @vosje62 @bert_hubert great comment!

Kees de Kooter 🍉Mar 8

@tstruthers @bert_hubert @jwcph And that is why Microsoft has been getting away with outrageous license fees for two decades - from our tax payer's money.

We need to free ourselves from this hostage situation. And yes that will be painful but it is necessary.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Mar 8

@kdekooter @tstruthers @bert_hubert Guys, I neither disagree with any of this, nor do I want to challenge your experiences - but I do want to reiterate that resistance to the inconvenience of switching (which I specifically referred to as a strong motivation) ≠ preference.

What people prefer is for IT to not bother them or make them feel stupid - NOT "using Microsoft products".

I have a bit of professional experience with this, too, and I stand by my percentage 😁

@tstruthers I say the same things every time someone says it's easy to switch to free software, why don't people do it. It's easier with private customers but only if they are technically prepared and want to learn. With normal people, business/corporate/public entities is a long, big battle and not everyone is willing to invest time and money for the switch.
The best strategy to displace closed software is to mandate open standards and to take users early in life, like at schools. (my daughter is already used to Google and Microsoft products and dislikes Apple's or open counterparts)
It's a slow, hard process. @bert_hubert @jwcph

Hazel Weakly Mar 8

@bert_hubert @jwcph Oh absolutely. And even if preference or approval ratings were somehow in the single digits, the amount of people who would rather move than stay put and use what is already there is… also in those single digits

Interpipes 💙Mar 8

@bert_hubert this is the thing that is baffling to me about microsoft feeling the need to change interfaces for literally any reason at all

Every time they force a substantive change on users they roll the dice that those users might choose to change to someone else’s product if they have to be forced through change anyway

Arthur van Leeuwen Mar 8

@bert_hubert @jwcph what is worse is that the majority option is also culturally more acceptable. I heard a story once of an office that migrated from OS/2 to Windows, and did availability and user satisfaction measures before and after. Availability went down markedly, but user satisfaction increased... even when it came to availability, because 'everyone knows Windows sometimes crashes'.

Joris (dwz)Mar 9

@bert_hubert
I remember my then organisation "forcing" employees to use OpenOffice because we should be an example in government. I was the last programme manager open document managers (NOiV), national interest waned, new director came and we switched to Microsoft.
(and that was before the 365 CoPilot fun)
@jwcph

Steffen Grunwald Mar 8

@jwcph I wish secure operations at scale would be the selling point. The normal mode of operation in the internet is you’re under attack. I don’t feel that running a dedicated server with an open source office suite is enough.

Also, office.eu makes really strange misleading marketing on their page.