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| <h2><font color="#184090">Abstracts of Conference Papers - |
| Friday</font></h2> |
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| <table id="fc1100" name="fc1100" summary="Abstract" |
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| <font color="#FFFFFF"><strong>OpenOffice.org on three |
| continents</strong> A Real Life Case Study</font></td> |
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| |
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| <td>Michael Bona <em>Vorstand/CIO skilldeal AG, |
| Gitschiner Strasse 94, 10969 Berlin, Germany</em></td> |
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| <td> |
| The case study presents reasons for, obstacles and |
| experiences of a migration from MS Office to |
| OpenOffice.org in the context of a small but very |
| international company.<br /> |
| The Case Study is based on a real project and shows |
| how OpenOffice.org (OOo) helped a small company gain |
| a competitive cost advantage over much larger |
| competitors and helped the IT infrastructure keep up |
| with the rapid growth of the company. It is also a |
| demonstration of the potential benefits and risks of |
| a migration. The case study is divided into four |
| parts: |
| |
| <ol> |
| <li><strong>Before migration</strong>: "Migration |
| Corp." is a small but very international company. |
| The roughly 20 employees work in six offices on |
| three continents and have five working languages in |
| everyday business. In an industry dominated by |
| three global giants, "Migration Corp." manages |
| rapid growth thanks to innovative products and |
| rigid cost control. In support of this strategy the |
| complete IT has been outsourced. The outsourcing |
| service company is asked to come up with solutions |
| to provide a reliable IT-infrastructure at very low |
| cost. An audit of the existing IT shows that a |
| significant part of IT costs is spent on licenses. |
| At the same time, management has trouble tracking |
| all licenses due to dispersed organisation and |
| rapid growth. As one measure, the outsourcing |
| service company suggests migration to |
| OpenOffice.org on clients. The Case Study shows a |
| number of interesting and not widely discussed |
| reasons why the management was initially sceptical |
| but eventually agreed.</li> |
| |
| <li><strong>Migration</strong>: OpenOffice.org is |
| rolled out in several stages together with a |
| company-wide standard desktop installation. Install |
| glitches for multi-user installations and the |
| complexity of adding dictionaries are two examples |
| for the challenges of the standard install which |
| are eventually overcome. All in all, the process is |
| fairly smooth. The Case Study shows the problems of |
| the roll-out and how they were solved.</li> |
| |
| <li><strong>After migration</strong>: Seven months |
| after migration, the result is largely positive. |
| Most users are happy with OOo even though not all |
| have received training. Calls for end user support |
| have gone done quite quickly and most problems in |
| exchanging documents have been resolved. The Case |
| Study shows what issues remain and presents a |
| number of suggestions for a smooth migration.</li> |
| |
| <li><strong>Conclusion and Outlook</strong>: |
| "Migration Corp." is now a convinced OOo convert. |
| OOo has become a cornerstone of the IT |
| infrastructure and will be employed in a number of |
| new and unexpected ways. In the planning stages are |
| plug-ins for custom financial functions and using a |
| database for file storage, indexing and archiving. |
| To make this happen, "Migration Corp." hopes for an |
| effective and mutually beneficial dialogue with |
| fellow users and the development community.</li> |
| </ol> |
| </td> |
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| |
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| <td><em>Biography: Michael Bona is CIO at skilldeal AG, |
| a Berlin based IT-Consulting and Outsourcing company. |
| He holds a management degree from ESCP-EAP - The |
| European School of Management. Bona has worked on IT |
| projects in several European countries before |
| co-founding skilldeal AG in 2000. The focus of his work |
| are innovative and cost-optimised solutions for small |
| and medium companies - often resulting in projects |
| based on Free or Open Source Software.</em></td> |
| </tr> |
| </table> |
| |
| <p><a href="friday.html" |
| title="Agenda for Friday">Back</a></p> |
| </td> |
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| <font color="#FFFFFF"><strong>User Experience |
| (Panel)</strong></font></td> |
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| |
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| <td>Lutz Höger <em>Product Manager, User |
| Experience</em> Christian Jansen <em>Product |
| Specialist, User Experience</em> Matthias |
| Müller-Prove <em>Product Manager, User |
| Experience</em> <em>Sun Microsystems / Star Office |
| Software Entwicklungs GmbH, Sachsenfeld 4, 20097 |
| Hamburg, Germany</em>, Nick Richards</td> |
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| |
| <tr> |
| <td>This panel will concentrate on usability issues of |
| OpenOffice.org. It will tackle the general conception |
| that open-source software and usable software exclude |
| each other. A team of professional usability experts, |
| together with user interface contributors of the |
| OpenOffice.org community can create an Office product |
| that holds its own in the face of Office suite |
| competition.</td> |
| </tr> |
| |
| <tr> |
| <td><em>Biography: Lutz Höger (TBD); |
| Christian Jansen has held a position on the StarOffice |
| User Experience team for over 4 years. |
| As a member of this user experience team at Sun Microsystems, |
| he plays a major role in the product design of StarOffice. |
| His responsibilities include designing and specifying the |
| graphical user interface and the functionalitly behind it and |
| in so doing, addressing easy-to-use-interface needs. |
| Specific areas include color schemes and accessibility |
| considerations. He holds a degree in Communication Design |
| from the 'Hamburger Akademie für Kommunikationsdesign und |
| Art Direction' |
| (Hamburg Academy for Communication Design and Art Direction); |
| Matthias Müller-Prove is a creative |
| computer scientist. His reputation as a first-class |
| human-computer interaction expert is based on nine |
| years of direct experience designing professional |
| software interfaces for international operating |
| companies. Before joining the StarOffice User |
| Experience team at Sun Microsystems, he played a |
| significant role in designing the user interface of |
| Adobe GoLive. He holds a degree from University of |
| Hamburg (Dipl.-Inform.) and is member of the usability |
| professionals association upa and ACM/SIGCHI; |
| Nick Richards is the Marketing Project Lead at OpenOffice.org. |
| This means he gets in the way of programmers, asks lots |
| of questions and talks too much. He is in the final year |
| of a History degree at King's College London.</em></td> |
| </tr> |
| </table> |
| |
| <p><a href="friday.html" |
| title="Agenda for Friday">Back</a></p> |
| </td> |
| </tr><!-- End Abstract --> |
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| <table id="fc1330" name="fc1330" summary="Abstract" |
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| <td bgcolor="#184090"><font color="#FFFFFF"><strong>The |
| Open ECDL</strong>: how to use opensource software - |
| namely OpenOffice.org – for |
| delivering ECDL courses</font></td> |
| </tr> |
| |
| <tr> |
| <td>Egidio Pentiraro <em>Advisor, EdOsNet.org, Via |
| Ragazzi del 99 n. 19, I - 23100 Sondrio SO, |
| Italy</em></td> |
| </tr> |
| |
| <tr> |
| <td>ECDL stands for "European Computer Driving |
| Licence". ECDL is an internationally recognised |
| qualification that enables people to certify their |
| competence in essential computer skills & |
| knowledge. In the past, the ECDL was mainly based on |
| Microsoft products: Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, |
| Outlook.<br /> |
| Recently, the ECDL has become a really ' vendor |
| independent certification '. Now, the ECDL Tests can be |
| performed everywhere with opensource software, such as: |
| GNU/Linux, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, Evolution.</td> |
| </tr> |
| |
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| <td><em>Biography:</em></td> |
| </tr> |
| </table> |
| |
| <p><a href="friday.html" |
| title="Agenda for Friday">Back</a></p> |
| </td> |
| </tr><!-- End Abstract --> |
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| <font color="#FFFFFF"><strong>OpenOffice.org Enterprise |
| Deployment</strong></font></td> |
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| |
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| <td>Martijn Dekkers <em>Technical Architect Linux, |
| Computacenter</em></td> |
| </tr> |
| |
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| <td>Session will present a paper describing |
| best-practice for deploying medium to large scale |
| OpenOffice.org deployments.<br /> |
| One of the barriers to widespread adoption of |
| OpenOffice.org witin the business community is |
| deployment of the product. The highest costs of |
| operating a software product within a business |
| environment are associated with deployment and |
| management. This paper presents best-practice in the |
| area of piloting and deployment of OpenOffice.org, and |
| discusses several methods of smoothing user adoption |
| and acceptance of OpenOffice.org.<br /> |
| Today, not many organisations are comfortable running |
| Open Source Software in a production environment |
| – not due to a lack of trust in the |
| capabillities of the software as such, but rather due |
| to lack of support etc. Not many organisations are |
| ready to commit to a community-based support, and |
| prefer the comfort of a commercial support contract, |
| and therefore would turn to StarOffice for live |
| deployment within their organisation. Notwithstanding, |
| organisations still benefit from OpenOffice.org in many |
| ways.<br /> |
| First OpenOffice.org is used in the piloting phase of |
| the project, allowing a single individual or project |
| team to engage directly with the community for advice |
| and support , at a relatively low cost and risk point. |
| The fact that OpenOffice.org is Open Source, and all |
| facets of the product are “out |
| there†in the open often instill a true |
| sense of confidence in the potential adopting |
| organisation that “what they see is |
| what they will getâ€.<br /> |
| Secondly, should an organisation decide to deploy |
| StarOffice, OpenOffice.org can be used by employees at |
| home free of charge, maintaining full |
| compatibillity.with the office work environment.<br /> |
| The path for adoption from OpenOffice.org through to |
| StarOffice proposes an attractive vale proposition to |
| all involved and is a true win-win situation all |
| around. The organisation benefits from community |
| support, and a smooth, risk-free adoption path. The |
| benefit to the community of this approach is likewise |
| enormous. As adopting organisations actively engage |
| with the developer community, valuable lessons are |
| learned, and product adjust can – |
| and often are – made right there and |
| then. Finally, Sun Microsystems benefits as well, as it |
| can clearly see a return on the considerable investment |
| it has made into OpenOffice.org to date.<br /> |
| Finally, the paper discusses aspects of operational |
| management of OpenOffice.org in a live production |
| environment, and outlines several areas where |
| OpenOffice.org can see more improvement in order to |
| effectively compete with other products.</td> |
| </tr> |
| |
| <tr> |
| <td><em>Biography:</em></td> |
| </tr> |
| </table> |
| |
| <p><a href="friday.html" |
| title="Agenda for Friday">Back</a></p> |
| </td> |
| </tr> |
| --> |
| <!-- End Abstract --> |
| </table> |
| <hr /> |
| |
| <p><a href="friday.html">Back to Friday</a><br /> |
| <a href="#top">Back to Top</a><br /> |
| <a href="agenda2.html">Back to Overview</a></p> |
| |
| <p>Please Note: Program content subject to change.</p> |
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