Abstracts of Conference Papers -
Thursday
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Marketing OpenOffice.org
in your country |
| Nick Richards Co-Lead OpenOffice.org Marketing Project |
| An overview of the past years progress expanding
into how to engage disparate national communities with
OpenOffice.org. Hints on who to talk to, why you'd want
to talk to them and suchlike. A seminar where 'best
practice' is shared. |
| Biography:
Nick Richards is the Marketing Project Co-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.
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Migrating from Microsoft
Office to
Openoffice.org/StarOffice |
| Frank Gamerdinger Product Specialist Desktop
solutions, Sun Microsystems, Germany, 85551
Kirchheim-Heimstetten, Germany |
This session will discuss issues in migrating from
Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org/StarOffice.
An general overview of a migration project will be
given and some possible migration scenarios are
covered. The presentation will also discuss technical
details faced during migration. |
| Biography: Frank Gamerdinger has worked in the
IT industry for XXX years. He has been a Java software
developer and freelance IT consultant and has written
articles for the German computer press.Joining Sun
Microsystems 4 years ago, he is now one if the
StarOffice product specialists in the Desktop Solutions
group, assisting strategic StarOffice and desktop
pilots. |
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Where do we go from
here? The future of OpenOffice.org |
| Louis Suarez-Potts Community Manager,
CollabNet |
OpenOffice.org was conceived nearly three years ago
with the desire to join what seemed, in the late 90s,
to be a movement that would permanently change the way
software was produced. CollabNet, founded by Brian
Behlendorf of Apache fame and funded by a stellar
group, was contracted by Sun Microsystems to provide
the collaborative work environment for what was hailed
as the largest open-source project in the world.
No one expected success, at least not on the level that
we have seen. There was not even what would count as a
valid measure of success, when the project was
conceived. Open source held the promise of simplifying
software development, of allowing corporations to get
to market faster, and of generally improving the code.
All these have turned out to be true, albeit with some
qualifications (what counts as "get to market"?). But
no one anticipated that OpenOffice.org would engage the
millions of endusers it has and gain such an enormous
following outside USA's borders; and no one anticipated
that the infrastructure on which OpenOffice.org runs,
an early version of CollabNet's SourceCast, would be
able to handle a participant community of 90,000
registered users and developers, working side by side,
collaborating trans-nationally.
This paper examines where we stand today in terms of
community organization, and involvement. It touches on
the present political and technical structure of
OpenOffice.org. It then moves on to discuss what the
future of the project may look like, from a
technological, community, and political perspective (by
"political" I mean a politics specific to
OpenOffice.org, not the wider world). This paper will
be of interest to anyone who is curious as to where
OpenOffice.org is going and how it is going to get
there. |
| Biography: I have been helping to lead
OpenOffice.org since its inception, in October 2000. As
a consultant for CollabNet, which hosts OpenOffice.org
and several other Sun OSS sites, I have been able to
exploit my academic training and background. I received
my PhD in English from the University of California,
Berkeley, where I taught courses on nineteenth- and
twentieth-century U.S. and British culture. I am at
present working on two books, one, a study of the
difference corporate-sponsored open-source efforts have
made to the open-source milieu, and the other, a
refinement of my dissertation. |
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What is the difference
between OpenOffice.org and
StarOffice? |
| Erwin Tenhumberg
Product Marketing Manager, Desktop Solutions Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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| At trade shows and similar events the most
frequently asked question is What is the
difference between OpenOffice.org and
StarOffice?. The goal of this session is to
provide everybody who does marketing for OpenOffice.org
with detailed answers to this question. In this session
the attendees will learn what differences and
similarities exist between StarOffice and
OpenOffice.org concerning the functionality as well as
the support and service offerings. The presentation
will also give a brief overview about other derivative
products like RedOffice, KaiOffice or
OpenOfficePL. |
| Biography:
Erwin Tenhumberg is a Product Marketing Manager in the
Desktop Solutions Group at Sun Microsystems, Inc. Within this
group he mainly focusses on the developer aspects of both
OpenOffice.org and StarOffice[tm] including the SDK.
Erwin started working for Sun as a Systems Engineer in
Langen, Germany. There he did pre-sales for
various software products including StarOffice and SunRay[tm].
Before Erwin joined Sun he worked for different companies where
he did Java consulting, software development and desktop
application administration and helpdesk.
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OpenOffice Instituted By
Computer Engineering Technology
School |
| John McLafferty Instructor, Computer
Engineering Technology, Palliser Campus, Saskatchewan
Institute of Applied Science and Technology, Moose Jaw,
SK, Canada, S6H 4R4 |
I am an instructor in the Computer Engineering
Technology Department, Palliser Campus, of the
Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and
Technology in Moose Jaw Saskatchewan, Canada. It is a
5 semester course (4 months/semester) with 3
semesters of work terms. The course is accredited by
the Canadian Association of Technicians and
Technologists.
The decision was made more than two years ago to
teach OpenOffice (StarOffice initially) to all the
1st semester students as an introduction to computer
applications. This also requires that the students
use OpenOffice when submitting required lab reports
and various homework assignments.
The Department was using the WordPerfect Office
suite. We were starting to have problems with license
and compatibility between versions. In addition, the
students were resorting to bootlegged versions of the
software for their home computers. The Department
goal was to have all the students use the same base
software so there would be no problems with some
having a spread sheet that didn't work right, and
others with spell check problems, and so on.
We had talked about doing something with the course
and the software for a while, but because we could
see a big job ahead of us, we did what anybody else
would do; hope that the college would buy us out for
retirement. As it turned out, the decision was made
for us. We got a list of the number of students
coming into 1st semester and looked at our computer
labs. Another lab was needed and we had 3 days and no
software budget. The Department had some experience
with Linux and I had been using StarOffice from the
moment Sun released it. The decision was made; we
rolled out StarOffice/OpenOffice and Linux.
None of the horror stories that would be expected
from making a total change in office application and
operating system software occurred, but we were
totally surprised by some of the unexpected things
that happened. For example, the initial apathy by the
students, and the apprehension of going into a
"Microsoft Free Zone"
computer lab.
Nothing is harder on a computer lab than 1st
semester students who think they know what they are
doing. The lab required some attention for the first
week with permission and password problems; after
that, it was virtually maintenance free.
I plan on adding more open source software (MySQL
and PHP) to the 1st semester course next
September.
Session Description:
- Reasons for choosing OpenOffice for use in a
high technology course.
- How Open Office was implemented.
- Unexpected surprises encountered.
- Why we would do it again the same way.
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| Biography: I am an Instructor with the
Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and
Technology in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. I have
been involved with teaching and consulting in the Micro
processors, Computers and Software fields since I saw
my first 4004 chip. The Computer Engineering Technology
department of SIAST, myself, and all the instructors
have been proactive in the use of open source software
and including this software in our courses. Because of
the success that I have had with open source software,
I have been promoting its use in other departments
within the college and also within education and
business in general. |
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| The
OpenOffice.org developer survey -
first results, findings and next
steps |
| Erwin Tenhumberg Product Marketing Manager,
Desktop Solutions Group, Sun Microsystems,
Inc. |
Together with the beta release of the
OpenOffice.org SDK we started the first developer
survey on OpenOffice.org. The goal of the survey is to
determine what interest developers have in
OpenOffice.org and what tools they prefer for their
work. In addition the survey will help to improve the
quality of the SDK.
In this session we will have a close look at the first
results and try to interpret the different numbers.
During the session we will also discuss what questions
should be added to future developer surveys. Besides,
we will try to draw first conclusions an think about
necessary next steps. |
| Biography: Erwin Tenhumberg is a Product
Marketing Manager in the Desktop Solutions Group at Sun
Microsystems, Inc. Within this group he mainly focusses
on the developer aspects of both OpenOffice.org and
StarOffice[tm] including the SDK. Erwin started working
for Sun as a Systems Engineer in Langen, Germany. There
he did pre-sales for various software products
including StarOffice and SunRay[tm]. Before Erwin
joined Sun he worked for different companies where he
did Java consulting, software development and desktop
application administration and helpdesk. |
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Please Note: Program content subject to change.
