Marketing Planet

John McCreesh: ‘Cento Milioni’ Conference – day 3

2009-11-06T20:41:17+00:00

Another wet morning in Orvieto. My conference day started with the Art Project’s proposals for a new logo for OpenOffice.org. These are the results of just a few weeks’ visual brainstorming, and showed a wide range of ideas from the evolutionary to the revolutionary. I must say I’m not a fan of real-life seagulls – rats with wings…

A chat with Olivier about what we can learn from Brazil, home now to three ‘Cento Milioni’ corporate desktop deployments, then a quick sesson with Italo to decide how we will close the OOoCon, and just time to knock together a few slides in Impress.

Back to the Conference, where the Marketing Project had grabbed a vacant conference slot to continue the discussions about plans for next year. These discussions need to be continued on the mailing lists with colleagues who couldn’t attend the Cento Milioni Conference, so we can get budget proposals in front of the Community Council for next year. Looks like I have some transcription to do when I get home.

First proper lunch of the OOoCon (i.e. > pizza) then back to join in a Community Council Q&A sesssion. This was not as lively as in some past Conferences, but it was interesting that several of the issues raised today, had also been raised by the candidates for the vacant seats in our conversation on Thursday evening.

Then on to the stage to bring the Conference to a close with the expected lively contribution from Italo. Italo handed the “poor man’s torch” to Peter for next year’s OOoCon in Budapest – I’ll try and link to photos of this on the web…

And that was it. The three days of conference have flown by, and our amazing interntional community becomes virtual for another ten months. Mille Grazie Orvieto!

John McCreesh: ‘Cento Milioni’ Conference – day 2

2009-11-06T07:57:46+00:00

Woke up to thick haar – I can’t believe this weather travelled all the way from Edinburgh just to make me feel at home. Fortunately the sun broke through during the morning to give a bright sunny noon. Market day in Orvieto – everywhere felt a lot busier – there even seemed to be a flurry of late tourists.

Another full day at the OpenOffice.org ‘Cento Milioni’ Conference , from 9am to 7pm followed by the famous Native Language Confederation (NLC) Party – tickets a very non-threatening 10 Euro. The NLC is arguably OpenOffice.org’s greatest success, with mostly volunteer teams around the world translating the software and documentation nd providing the full range of support in the world’s major languages. I spent the morning listening to the documentation and translation teams sharing success stories and best practice, and grumbling about software support for their activities. There’s a clear opportunity for some open-source developers to fill gaps here … and earn the gratitude of hundreds of people around the world!

The afternoon was spent hopping between tracks. One major conference theme has been User Experience (UX) work. The OpenOffice.org Renaissance team had provoked a storm in the blogosphere earlier in the year. I enjoyed watching the team trying to cajole an OOoCon audience into a participative session showing how UX goes about it business. It was interesting to compare this with the work IBM have done on Lotus Symphony, their commercial product derived from OpenOffice.org.

It was also great to hear from the hugely successful NLC operation in Brazil, where OpenOffice.org (or BrOffice,org as it’s known for trademark reasons) is in danger of becoming the de-facto choice, with three major corporate deployments each with ‘cnto milioni’ desktop deployments.

So it was only right to round off the day at the NLC Party, which was a hugely convivial event. Alas, the caterers had failed to estimate the appetites of software developers – or the necessity for strict portion control at buffets attended by said population leading to long queues and people threatening to ring Dominos for additional pizzas. Maybe this is the ’slow food’ for which Umbria is famous

John McCreesh: ‘Cento Milioni’ Conference – day 1

2009-11-05T08:18:47+00:00

First day of the OpenOffice.org “Cento Milioni” Conference in Orvieto, Italy. It was fun to watch the expression of the people arriving in the Palazzo dei Popolo for the keynote sessions. Imagine the typical glass and concrete conference centre – now imagine the opposite!

Another ten hour day – even the lunch hour was taken up by a follow-up Community Council meeting – so I won’t attempt a summary of every session. The Conference Programme is on the web, as are the recordings of the conference sessions.

My main impression at the end of the first day is the way that OpenOffice.org is becoming mainstream. We had presentations from municipal authorities who have adopted OpenOffice.org wholescale; from a systems integrator who building OpenOffice.org into solutions; even a hardware company launching a multi-button mouse specifically designed for OpenOffice.org. Presenters addressed the kind of issues that only arise in large scale deployments: migration, training, tailoring OpenOffice.org / locking down the software for mass desktop rollouts. Presenters talked about running OpenOffice.org on netbooks and creating portable versions to run from a usb stick – OpenOffice is now a truly pervasive application.

To end the day: another civic reception with drinks and a buffet, this time featuring local wines, meats, pastas, cheeses, etc. These people take their food seriously. A quick conversation with some senior Oracle folks – I hope they were impressed with the astonishing value for money which the OpenOffice.org Community represents A beer stop on the way home with a dozen folk from several continents, then some more putting the world to rights conversations with Cor.

I now need to add today’s photos to my OOoCon album in Facebook…

John McCreesh: Watch OOoCon!

2009-11-04T11:48:11+00:00

Stop Press

OpenOffice.org Conference sessions live streaming
Recorded sessions – available at the end of the day

John McCreesh: ‘Cento Milioni’ Conference – day-1

2009-11-04T07:24:46+00:00

Yesterday’s rain disappeared overnight, and Orvieto awoke to a sunny autumn day. Today isn’t an official OpenOffice.org Conference day, but a tradition has developed that different community groups use the opportunity for face to face meetings. So time for a quick sightseeing trip round this wonderful mediaeval city. I also found the local jeweller does emergency watchstrap repairs free of charge – I’m a tourist who doesn’t speak the local language, so I expect to be ripped off, so this was wonderful!

My day began at 10am, with a workshop led by Italo Vignoli, a PR professional who has worked wonders in driving up the brand recognition and market share of OpenOffice.org in Italy. Italo’s session was a masterclass in how open source communities with zero marketing budget can compete and win against companies with six figure annual budgets – by doing what they do best.

After a quick pizza, back for a meeting of the MarCons (Marketing Contacts) again to learn from the successful Italian operation, and discuss how 2009 had gone. It was our “Year of the developer”, and we had focussed spending on going to developer conferences. We had feedback from those who had taken part – what hadn’t worked, what had, and what we should do more of. Looking to next year, we had some good discussions on priorities and budget requests – but we decided to continue this in a full conference session to canvass wider views.

The Community Council then kicked in at about 5pm – we manage to be even later when meeting face to face than we are on irc The minutes of this will be posted on the wiki, so I’m not going to duplicate them here (especially as I will be writing them…) We finally called it a day at 8pm, and went off to enjoy drinks and nibbles courtesy of the local suthorities here, grateful for the out-of-season conference business.

Just time to upload some photos to Facebook, and the end of a long day. Ten hours of meetings, and that was just the pre-conference day!

OOo Marketeers: Follow OpenOffice.org Conference on Twitter!

floeff — 2009-11-01T21:54:08+00:00

At http://twitter.com/ooocon we've just set up a Twitter bot for the OpenOffice.org Conference. It checks Twitter every five minutes for posts with the tag #ooocon and retweets them automatically.

It seems to take up to 30 minutes until the search gives new results, so postings are a little bit delayed, but please make use of it. :-) For everything OOoCon-related you twitter, simply add #ooocon and get listed!

GullFOSS: New: OOo-DEV 3.2.0 Developer Snapshot (build OOO320_m3) available

Joost Andrae — 2009-11-01T13:07:59+00:00

Developer Snapshot build OOo-Dev OOO320_m3 which installs as OOo-DEV 3.2.0 has been uploaded.

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link:
http://download.openoffice.org/next

Release Notes:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/OOO320_m3_snapshot.html

MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/md5sums/OOO320_m3_md5sums.txt

GullFOSS: October Status Update for Project Renaissance

frankl — 2009-10-29T16:20:02+00:00

Thinning out process for the existing OOo user interface has started. Focus for OOo 3.3 will be on Impress. Please find the October status update presentation for Project Renaissance at the OOo Wiki (1 MB).

Feedback welcome.

Best regards,

Project Renaissance Team

Leif Lodahl: 100,000,000 downloads

Leif Lodahl — 2009-10-29T12:49:16+00:00

On October 28th. 2009, the one hundred millionth person clicked on the Download OpenOffice.org button since version 3.0 of the software was announced just over one year ago.www.openoffice.org

John McCreesh: OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2010

2009-10-28T20:38:13+00:00

An interesting piece of research came my way today courtesy of Computer Weekly magazine. They asked their tame panel questions about open-source versus commercial software, and published their findings here.

The section of interest to OpenOffice.org enthusiasts states:

The majority of panellists have not trialled or reviewed any office/desktop productivity software, although around a third (35%) have looked at Open Office. Those working in smaller organisations (50 employees or less) appear to be more prepared for their next upgrade with two thirds having trialled or reviewed any potential software.

Despite this, a significant proportion (66%) believe that they are most likely to implement Microsoft Office 2010, although intentions to implement Open Office was higher amongst those organisations with less than 50 employees.

This provides evidence to support our belief that in large organisations, software purchasing decision makers are pretty conservative – “no-one gets fired for buying Microsoft”. In smaller organisations, decision makers are more willing to do their own research, and having tried OpenOffice.org, are more likely to go for it. They are probably also more careful with their budgets!

John McCreesh: Oracle and OpenOffice.org

2009-10-28T20:23:22+00:00

It was also good today to see a report on Oracle’s plans for OpenOffice.org. Sun Microsystems is OpenOffice.org’s founding and principle sponsor, so the news that Sun was to be acquired by Oracle had set hearts fluttering in the open-source world.

It’s worth quoting the relevant section in full:

What is Oracle’s plan for OpenOffice?

Oracle has a history of developing complete, integrated, and open products, making integration quicker and less costly for our customers. Based on the open ODF standard, OpenOffice is expected to create a compelling desktop integration bridge for our enterprise customers and offers consumers another choice on the desktop. After the transaction closes, Oracle plans to continue developing and supporting OpenOffice as open source. As before, some of the larger customers will ask for extra assurances, support, and enterprise tools. For these customers we expect to offer a typical commercial license option.

Which sounds remarkably similar to the Sun proposition, with OpenOffice.org (shame about the .org) as the free version and StarOffice as a commercial offering. Another reason to be cheerful in the run up to OOoCon 2009 – the Cento Milioni Conference.

John McCreesh: Cento Milioni Celebrations

2009-10-28T20:19:01+00:00

Those of you who keep an eye on the download counter on the OpenOffice.org Marketing Planet will have noticed we have been inexorably moving towards another significant milestone. When the latest figures appear tomorrow, we expect them to show that sometime today, the One Hundred Millionth (100,000,000) person clicked on the Download OpenOffice.org button since we released version 3 just over a year ago. Expect some pretty heavy celebrations at the OpenOffice.org Conference in Orvieto, Italy next week – which has been branded the “Cento Milioni Conference” in honour of the occasion!

GullFOSS: OOo QA Reloaded: Internship program - Individual project

clu — 2009-10-28T16:07:57+00:00

a follow up to blog: OOo QA Internship programm

I am proud to introduce the results from the three month individual project of the Hitek school students, which is an important and closing part inside the oo qa internship program: Sample Music Database

p.s. a lot of further info & stuff you get on the students sites

screenshots from a students sample database:

.. at the end i would like to quote Nadejda, a student from the project:

"I'd like to say THANK YOU, OOo Openoffice for this project! Thank you for opportunity to learn so many new things! The time of internship was a great time! Sometimes it was very hard but I enjoyed it. I will miss you. Good luck OOo Openoffice!"

bye Chris

GullFOSS: New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m63) available

Joost Andrae — 2009-10-28T11:48:58+00:00

Developer Snapshot build OOo-Dev DEV300_m63 which still installs as OOo-DEV 3.2 has been uploaded to the mirror network.

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link:
http://download.openoffice.org/next

Packages are also available from extended mirror sites ( listed with an [E] ) from the ".../extended/developer/DEV300_m62" directory:
http://distribution.openoffice.org/mirrors/#extmirrors

Release Notes:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/DEV300_m63_snapshot.html

MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/md5sums/DEV300_m63_md5sums.txt

Charles Schulz: Running for Lang Representative at the Community Council

2009-10-27T17:29:17+00:00

I thought it might help if I’d post here my “official” information page for the OpenOffice.org Community Council Elections. This page can be found on the OpenOffice.org wiki.

A few words on Charles-H. Schulz My name is Charles-H. Schulz and I have been a contributor to the OpenOffice.org project since its 1.0 release. I live in Paris and have been working in several IT-related jobs. Today I run a small consultancy in the fields of Free Software and Open Standards. I’m not really what you will call a technical person, but at least I know how to use a terminal and, among other things, start OpenOffice.org from there. In fact, I even know how to start it as a server in “headless” mode, more accurately. By the way, I’m running a Fedora 11 on a quad core HP computer as my main machine, a two years-old Mac Book Pro you might see me with if you go to Orvieto, and as of very recently a Samsung with Android on it.

My other areas of interest include litterature, History, philosophy and organic food, among other things.

So why am I writing all this? Because we are in the process of electing some of the future members of the OpenOffice.org, and I’m running as a candidate in the Native-Language category. The rules of renewal of Council members are a bit complex, but there are different types of possible candidates that may run, and I’m running in one of them this year. It is the first time I’m running for the Council.

What does Charles do inside OpenOffice.org?I’m doing several things inside OpenOffice.org . I have somewhat of a strange title “Lead of the Native-Language Confederation”. It sounds like it belongs to Battlestar Galactica, but it actually is a very OpenOfficeish thing. What this means is I’m in charge of organizing and helping new and existing communities of OpenOffice.org developers, users, marketers, documentation writers who speak in their own native-language. These communities are called native-language projects. They work with the entire project and are one of the key factors of our success. When I took on that role, they were about 5 of them. Now, they’re around 100. Serving as a volunteer in that position makes one both a player and a witness of how the OpenOffice.org community works. On the one hand I have a social and administrative task, on the other, one should not stop there: you have to look for more volunteers who may start new projects. That’s a fascinating job.

I have also done other things inside our community. I was among the founders of the Business Development project (aka bizdev) and I am also very proud to be a co-lead of the ODF@WWW project. It is an incubator project that fiddles with ODF documents online, and allows them to be edited real time on a wiki and inside OpenOffice.org. In fact, this project is very important for the future of OpenOffice.org, and for our final goal, which is world domination.

What would Charles do in the Community Council?That’s a good question, isn’t it? My first duty, as a “Lang” representative, would be to represent the worldwide communities of OpenOffice.org. I’m not going to make promises like a politician, because this is not a campaign: it’s an information page. So I’m just going to explain what I think I could do there and how I could help. So my first duty would be to express the point of views of these worldwide communities to the Council, which means explaining their issues, their needs and wants. I will also have to work with the other Lang representative (because there’s two of us at the Council) and help the Council run our project. I should also try to get a bigger perspective on things, because OpenOffice.org is not just the addition of all the interests of categories, people and organizations that make up the project. It’s something bigger, more beautiful and more powerful. We are on a mission, and our mission is twofold: make OpenOffice.org one of the best Free Software for the future, and have fun. Because if you don’t have fun, well, you won’t even finish reading what I’m writing. More seriously: The future might be tough. But it’s going to be exciting, and in the end, I think we’re going to have a pretty awesome project, a project with a strong basis and foundation, that will genuinely be a great place for its people and its supporters. At least that’s what I will also try to help with at the Community Council, and I will consider myself satisfied if I remain true to these objectives and to the value of software freedom and true openness.

Leif Lodahl: November 2009 Newsletter

Leif Lodahl — 2009-10-25T20:07:17+00:00

Newsletter November (Danish) is out: http://bit.ly/3H4Txw. Read about 100 mio. downloads and a nine year old girl. There is also something about OpenOffice.

GullFOSS: User Feedback Data for Impress

frankl — 2009-10-23T13:02:19+00:00

Project Renaissance has created a special spreadsheet with the Impress User Feedback Data.

This spreadsheet is easier to use than the full version (no filtering needed) and will be used for the thinning out process of the Impress user interface.

The spreadsheet provides data for:

Shortcuts
Menu Entries
Toolbars
and new: A list of not called events

Furthermore a new event analysis (20 prev/next events) for:

Undo
Text
Position and Size dialog

Best regards,

The Renaissance Team

Alan Lord: Our Windows 7 Special Offer

2009-10-22T05:00:09+00:00

This post is a “reprint” of an email we have just sent to the subscriber list for our Liberation newsletter. The audience is largely UK based businesses and public sector organisations. Should you wish to receive Liberation, you can subscribe here and please feel free to pass it on.

Today, Microsoft invite you to part with your hard-earned cash and upgrade your computers to Windows 7^®. If you are one of the majority still using Windows XP, then moving to Windows 7 may not be a pleasant or inexpensive task…

Surprisingly there isn’t actually a way to upgrade your computer from Windows XP to Windows 7 in the traditional sense. You’ll need to back up all your data, re-format the hard-drive and start again from scratch.

Windows doesn’t store your documents, personal information, historical data, emails, passwords, cookies, preferences, settings etc. in one place. So backing up and rebuilding Windows computers is a very time-consuming and complicated process:

Work our how many licenses you need then go and pay for them
Buy some new storage for all the temporary backup space you’ll need
Back up everything on every computer
Install the basic operating system
Find and install the right hardware drivers for your machine(s). Much hardware may not yet have suitable Windows 7 drivers
Register and Activate each new computer, requires you to have network access
Find all the disks and license keys for the applications you use, then re-install them. If they are still compatible that is
Install & configure the drivers and software for printers and other peripherals. Many peripherals may also not yet have suitable drivers
Copy your data and settings etc. back to all the right places on the new system.

Plan for this process taking anywhere between 4 and 8 hours for each and every computer you have.

Gartner estimates that real migration costs will be between $1,035 & $1,930 per user from Windows XP to Windows 7.

Why can’t I upgrade?

Windows 7 Upgrades

That is a good question, and one that we have not seen a good answer to. Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal asked Microsoft about upgrade paths and was sent this matrix showing all the different ways you can’t upgrade from other versions of Windows to Windows 7 (Blue = No upgrade, rip out and replace. Green = in-place upgrade).

Microsoft have also provided a document explaining the same thing in words. There is no upgrade path from any of the following operating systems:

Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows XP, Windows Vista^® RTM, Windows Vista Starter, Windows 7 M3, Windows 7 Beta, Windows 7 RC, or Windows 7 IDS, Windows NT^® Server 4.0, Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server^® 2003, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2.

That’s a complete mess. What can I do then?

You could do nothing and stay on Windows XP for as long as possible. Although we think this will be a very popular choice, staying on a nearly 10 year old OS probably isn’t the best policy for a forward thinking organisation.

You do have a choice

As you are going to have to rip out and replace your computers’ operating systems anyway, now is a real Carpe Diem opportunity to investigate an alternative (or two) whilst considering your options.

The Open Learning Centre recommends that your organisation investigates the many benefits offered by a modern Linux-based desktop operating system such as Ubuntu. As an authorised Ubuntu partner we can help your organisation with evaluation, installation, testing, migration, implementation, training and support services.

Ubuntu Desktop

Ubuntu is a modern, stable, reliable and secure computing platform that includes most of the applications we all use every day, such as a compatible office suite (Word-processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations) OpenOffice.org, email and calendaring, web browsing and image manipulation tools.

Best of all, Ubuntu is free:

Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing.

The retail price for a single Windows 7 Professional license is £219.99 and it’s £229.99 for the Ultimate version. This doesn’t include applications either.

Our Offer: On-Site Ubuntu Installation and Training

The Open Learning Centre will visit your premises, install Ubuntu on a suitable computer, and provide approximately 2-3 hours (i.e approx half a working day) of professional training and advice on Ubuntu for £229.99¹ (inc. VAT). An outline of the training is available on our website. Please contact us to book your Introduction to Ubuntu.

Open your mind to Open Source software today

1. Depending on your location we may need to charge extra for travelling expenses etc.

Tell Someone Else!

GullFOSS: New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m62) available

Joost Andrae — 2009-10-21T07:56:32+00:00

Developer Snapshot build OOo-Dev DEV300_m62 which still installs as OOo-DEV 3.2 has been uploaded to the mirror network.

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link:
http://download.openoffice.org/next

Packages are also available from extended mirror sites ( listed with an [E] ) from the ".../extended/developer/DEV300_m62" directory:
http://distribution.openoffice.org/mirrors/#extmirrors

Release Notes:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/DEV300_m62_snapshot.html

MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/md5sums/DEV300_m62_md5sums.txt

OOo Marketeers: Beta Release of OpenOffice.org 3.2

floeff — 2009-10-18T14:25:02+00:00

Have a look at the features and enhancements of the upcoming OpenOffice.org 3.2 release with our beta version. The final release is expected for December.