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Robin Cornelius wrote: > On Nov 5, 2007 10:48 AM, james kilty <james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 10:23 +0000, Robin Cornelius wrote: >> >> >>> I started off enquirys in this kind of area 12 months ago >>> >> What did you come up with? >> >>> I wouldn't focus on just "medium" that has a specific meaning in >>> general you should look at SMEs (small to medium size enterprises). >>> Small is 0-49, Medium is 50-249. Typical Business link type >>> definitions. >>> >> Fair enough. I mean small. It's a question of who might be most >> interested and the numbers of businesses - how best to make inroads. >> >> > > I mentioned this cause if you speak to organizations like Business > Link these numbers will have been firmly drummed into their heads and > associated with those definitions. > > Also most seminar type things they run are aimed at SME's so i would > recommend SME's as a general target. > > >>> What do you want to actually show? Would it not be better to have >>> presentations of case studies from people who have deployed such >>> systems. This is the kind of thing i have seen at Business Link >>> Seminars in the past. >>> >> How have they been received? >> > > A few i have been to have shown useful information. With the > presenters avaiable for general questions and networking/discussions > afterwards. They can be good things to go to. > > The other thing is Business link have a large reach to most SME > businesses and there role is provide information to the SME community, > they often run seminars that are free to attend so I think trying to > get in communications with some of the local area PBAs and saying you > want to run a seminar/series of seminars would be a *very* good move. > > >>> No reason why live servers etc could not be >>> demonstrated but to Joe Business Owner, a pile of servers is not >>> interesting at all. They want to know what it does(and in some cases >>> they don't care about this either) and how it benefits them. >>> >> Fair enough. I don't know what Joe needs. I just had this one need and >> thought a private show would help him along - he does actually want to >> get his organisation to migrate and I thought the server might be a good >> place to start. (Some staff do use OOo and the Gimp). He recognises a >> need to learn and it would all have to be worked so things did not crash >> all about him first time. Then there's resistance to change and file >> compatibility in a dual system. >> > > Yea as long as you highlight possible benefits and empower them to > make a rational and informed decision you have done your job :-) > getting a server to linux is probably a good start and using OOo and > Gimp etc are also a great transition too. This is the route i have > followed, but i just don't see a route at present to go to linux > desktops in my place, i would love to. Prehpase we could switch some > desktops particulay of the admin workers who only need email/office > etc but on other systems we have various ties that make it very > difficult. One of our ties is a classic lock in situation where out > data files can ONLY be read by one program that is protected with a > dongle that is no longer available and not supported, if the dongle > goes wrong we are screwed. > > > Robin > > Keith Menadue wrote: In this case I could be Joe . The Linux OS is a minor issue as Joe I don't worry about using Linux ... I'm like a lot of SME's, the easy bit is Open Office 2.0 or 2.3, Firefox and Modzilla Thunderbird and Servers. I'm worried about an equivalent Linux offering for Sage Line 50 accounts software. The closest I could find was 'My books Professional' I'm not sure its going to be OK for us. This is the Force Major thats holding me back not the OS. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html