JWcph, Radicalized By DecencyMar 8

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

Show threadbert 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.
Show threadTheDudeMar 8
@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.
Show thread🇪🇺 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.)

Show threadTheDudeMar 8

@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.

Show thread🇪🇺 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.

Show threadTheDude
@vosje62 @bert_hubert @jwcph I think this is a very salient point
Mar 8 at 11:20amWeb
Show threadAngela ScholderMar 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.