Windows? I Ain’t Got No Windows!

“I don’t need no windows! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ windows!” to continue to parody what I learned is the one of the most misquoted movie lines from the movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Over the last 3 months or so I’ve been a dual operating system kind of gal.  Not a dual boot but 2 CPU’s with 2 different OS on them.  Considering that we are an open source shop you’d be surprised to learn that I used Windows OS at all.  Because I had to use a client based ILS that only ran on Windows I was stuck.  But with our upcoming migration to Koha, an open source web-based ILS, I’ve been able to switch over to using Ubuntu (like the rest of my co-workers).

At first I found myself swiveling my chair between the Windows PC on my right and the Ubuntu machine in front of me.  Then I realized more and more I wasn’t moving from the machine in front of me.  Other than the times I need to look something up in the ILS client (e.g. customer account) or if I have to use PhotoShop (sorry, haven’t taken time to learn GIMP yet) most of the day my Windows machine stays unused.

I have my beloved Firefox, Thunderbird, Flock, and OpenOffice on the Ubuntu machine.  I have Meebo, Staff Intranet (using Joomla), DeskNow (collaborative email/file sharing/calendar software), FriendFeed, Facebook, Flickr, other Web 2.0 sites and our soon to be new ILS all in the browser of my choice.  I have TwitterFox, web developer toolbar, Stumbleupon toolbar and colorful tabs as some of my Firefox addons.  I’m in heaven on my Ubuntu machine.  Only thing I miss about my Windows machine is I had dual monitors hooked up to it.  Just need to find another monitor and I’ll be set.

What is really amazing is how quickly one can adapt if one has to or wants to.  I honestly could not help someone with an Word/PowerPoint/Excel question if I tried.  I can’t remember the last time I used them.  Ask me how to do it OpenOffice and I can pretty much answer them or at least find out how by going to Solveig Haugland’s great blog, OpenOffice.org Training, Tips and Ideas.  I had a staff member ask me about her home pc which is running on Windows XP and she uses Internet Explorer as her browser.  I haven’t used IE in years!  I was struggling to remember just where something was located on the menu bar.  I could easily tell her how to do it on Firefox.  It is amazing – you get used to what you use.  If I had remained on Windows I would have seen Linux as being a hard thing to convert to – now that I’ve been converted it wasn’t that hard at all to switch.

Do I miss Windows?  No, because the operating system shouldn’t be what’s important.  With more and more being about web-based solutions to issues the concern should be with the browser.  Do I miss Internet Explorer?  Heck No!  Matter of fact I think you do yourself and your customers/users a huge disservice to tie yourself with one operarting system, one browser.  People love choice.  If you are writing for the web you need to adhere to web standards so that your site can work in the browser of my choice (or anyone’s choice).

I can’t wait for the day that I can cut the cord to my Windows machine completely.

You Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Adobe….

….when you’ve got OpenOffice!

Thanks to Solveig Haugland’s demo on forms during our OpenOffice week at the Howard County Library (last week) I’ve now made my first interactive PDF using just OpenOffice Writer. Oh how I wish Solveig had come a week earlier as I had been fighting with an old PDF that I was converting to interactive using a trial version of full blown Adobe Acrobat 8. But now I find out I could have just done it from scratch using OpenOffice Writer.

It couldn’t have been simpler. Adding text boxes (they lined up beautifully without effort), assigning the font style and size, and tab ordering were a pleasure. Actually Writer was easier than the Adobe LiveCycle when it came to adding the tab order. One of the most frustrating things with Adobe was if I changed my mind about the tab order after I had already started it I was sunk. Especially since it seem to assign tab order to things that weren’t text or check boxes. From now on if I need to make a form (thinking I’ll redo the one that gave me such grief) I’ll be using OpenOffice Writer. So keep your Adobe just give me my OpenOffice.

Learning by Osmosis

I have quite enjoyed being the one to “tag along” with Solveig “OpenOffice Goddess Guru” Haugland this week.  Making sure she has what she needs, getting the photocopies done, setting up the PCs, etc. sounds like a lakey’s job but it has afforded me the opportunity to sit in on all of her trainings.

The thing that has been hard is while I’m playing Solveig’s handmaiden I have had 2 phones forwarded to my cell phone, been on IM, and keeping an eye on things back in the office.  This means that I often miss out on the great tips or tricks she is showing our staff.  I hope that at some point when I’m back in the office I’ll be able to go through her workbooks and gleam more.

However, I found out that I am absorbing more than I thought (even though my phone has rung constantly or the IM has been flashing at me) as I was able to help a co-worker with Calc issue.  Solveig was helping another co-worker so it fell to me to help.  *GULP*  Calc has to be the one product I use the least but I figured I could at least give it a go.  Proud to say that I was able to help her format the cells so that the line was the exact width and darkness she wanted.  Something I would never have been able to do prior to Solveig’s training.

So learning by osmosis may not be my favorite method but I am thrilled that some of Solveig’s great training has actually sunk in!

Day 2 of OO

I believe that people come into your life for a reason. Some stay a long time, some stay only a brief moment but they are all there for a reason. I think I figured out why Solveig Haugland came to Howard County Library to teach OpenOffice (well besides the obvious – we paid her to come and teach us). She is not only here to teach our staff how to better understand, use and help our customers use OpenOffice but she had a lesson for me as well.

Perhaps I should have entitled this post “All I need to learn about being a trainer I learned from Solveig.”

Just a short list of things I learned from Solveig today:

• Be unflappable. Stuff Happens – just deal with it in a calm, matter of fact manner and others will as well.
• Be alert. A room of 12-13 of people ranging in computer and OO experience got her attention when they needed it.
• Be assertive not aggressive. Her authority did not need to be questioned. A few times when people continued to talk when she needed them to pay attention to what she was pointing out she just calmly, assertively and without making them feel embarrassed let them know she now needed their attention.
• Be funny. Her humor punctuated the lessons at the right moments. He fun games (such as OpenOffice Jeopardy complete with throwing a stuffed penguin [how appropriate for HCL] between the teams to determine the next person.
• Be clear. When someone didn’t quite think they should do the exercise the way Solveig had described it – she explained the reason it would help her if she did it Solveig’s suggested method (work in pairs but communicate – talk it out helped to reinforce the steps they were working on).

So my thanks to the staff of Howard County for needing this training, my thanks to my boss, Amy DeGroff. for arranging for this training and most importantly a big thanks to Solveig. Little did I know she would teach me more than some OpenOffice tricks.

Day 1 of OO

WOW! Just one word can describe today – Wow. Solveig Haugland is a force to be reckon with. Tall, pretty, extremely smart, witty and loves chocolate. What’s not to like? I feel she created a lot of happy workers today.

Day 1 of OpenOffice Week here at Howard County Library started with our administration. These workers really use the OpenOffice suite of products they way they were designed. They had plenty of questions but I think the highlights happened when Solveig said things like “Oh, let me show you this it’s really cool!” I lost track of the amounts of “oooohs” and “ahhhhhs” that emanated from the room (many were my own). Today was just an overview of Writer, Calc, Base, Impress and Draw. I have 2 page worth of great ideas to implement when I get back to the office. I’ve already updated our very own OpenOffice FAQs to include links to Solveig’s blog and web site.

Day 2 will be equally interesting as we will start the morning off with picking the brains of our assistant branch managers and learning what our customers need to know about OpenOffice. I have every confidence that Solveig will WOW them as well. The rest of the week will be individual classes addressing Writer, Calc, Impress and Draw. If our staff walks away not having processes in OpenOffice be easier, simpler or more fun than they were before – well, they weren’t listening.

You can lead a horse to water but

… you can’t make it drink goes the rest of the line. By the end of next week I’m hoping that a lot more horses where I work will be drinking.

We have the distinct pleasure of Solveig Haugland’s presence for what we are calling OpenOffice Week at Howard County Library. I think Solveig’s one-line bio says it all “OpenOffice.org and StarOffice instructor with a passion for showing how the software makes things easier.” If that weren’t enough her sense of humor will put them at ease and the fact that she, like myself, highly believes in the powers of CHOCOLATE!

She will spend the whole week with us addressing training in Writer, Calc, Impress and Draw. Staff have been using OpenOffice for some time but old habits die hard or the training they did receive didn’t address their needs. I’m sure that Solveig will answer all their questions with style and grace (if she is anything like her phone calls/emails in person – we’ll be set!). I have faith in her that by the end of the week we’ll have many more OpenOffice converts drinking the water.

The best day will be Friday as we are hoping to get some of our open source vendors (Liblime, Groovix) together in one room for lunch with Solveig. Will be great to have so many like minded folk all in the same room.