Yeah I used to pull my hair when a team would start down the D3 path for some non-interactive graphic, and then push back when I'd explain you can just use SVG for this simple case.
Usually they get a good offer from Microsoft and drop the conversation. But this time it is not about pricing, but politics, so maybe they won't budge as easily.
is tempting to think they actually choose one of the several providers of office services, based in Europe, not some stupid attempt at moving non-technical people to linux...
The highest profile was in Munich where they did migrate >10,000 desktops to Linux and OpenOffice, but eventually they migrated back to Windows and Office:
Note that even when these projects succeed, the software users are running is invariably just Firefox, and often users have both a Windows and Linux PC side by side. There are no actual Linux apps being developed or maintained, in the sense of apps that use Linux APIs.
Speaking completely off the cuff here, but I suspect that as government applications move to be web-based, perhaps there could be another wave of Linux adoption since all it would take essentially is a functioning browser.
Windows just isn't that expensive. If you're paying MS for Office 365 anyway then there's no real point in replacing the set of drivers used by the browser.
I am puzzled that they not already have moved to the web.
Also speaking off the cuff: what are the main reasons for using word documents in
government?
If it is mostly communication with other parts of the government or the public, shouldn't this be email which requires very little functionality compared to word.
I can see niche cases, like laws where you want change tracking or very long
reports but that does not seem to apply to most government employees.
Somehow I feel I missing something big, maybe there is a lot of automation built around word documents?
I assume it went as well as an acquaintance of mine found out. Wanted to go Linux and open source so dumped O365 and got Fastmail, libreoffice in to start with. His two office staff found rather quickly that they were up shit creek as they didn't know how to do anything and stuff didn't work quite how they expected it to. So they ended up switching back to O365 in under a couple of months. This was for a company that cuts out bits of foam and sells them.
A lot of computer users are drones. They have no conceptual idea or care about what they are doing. Moving stuff, even simple things, is crippling for productivity.
Now scale that up to hundreds or thousands of people. In local government people don't like to talk about the failures at all because there is fallout so we probably won't find the truth about what really happened but I suspect it wasn't all about politics and cash backhanders and MSFT investment.
If you really want to move off MSFT you will probably have to start again and run two completely isolated silos.
No not negative at all. It's not the right fit for you. What would you go for out of interest?
Anyway your idea about collecting questions ahead of time is great. I would love to just react to the audience with questions and allow people to get on with things but not everyone will be self directed.
Having questions or topics of interest up front could help strike a balance though!
Yeah, in the workshops I've run in the past (not tech related), having upfront questions that you can curate and research ahead of time can really help get the conversation going. But also leave time for in-person questions, because otherwise the audience can feel ignored when they really want to ask you something.
And as you said, not every workshop is the right fit for every participant, and that's fine! In my case, if your workshop happened to be nearby, I'd probably go check it out "just cuz". I don't meet a lot of data viz people in my rural area (Central Oregon).
If it required travel, I'd gladly go if my employer would pay for it (they won't, because it's not relevant to my current job). For me to be willing to take a day off work and pay for travel expenses & registration fees myself, probably the only thing that'd get me to attend is what I mentioned already, namely real-world expertise from people who use D3 a lot, not a beginner's workshop. To be clear, I AM a beginner at D3, but I've used a lot of other charting solutions in the past, and I probably wouldn't attend a workshop just to learn the basics. I generally learn basic usage better from written tutorials, but I still enjoy real-life conferences if there are more advanced panels/discussions. The difference (to me) is that the advanced discussions are less "how-to"s and more "here's stuff you probably never even thought about... avoid these pitfalls".
Good luck with your workshop though, and thank you for running it! Sounds like a great opportunity for people who learn well that way.
'The difference (to me) is that the advanced discussions are less "how-to"s and more "here's stuff you probably never even thought about... avoid these pitfalls".'
Yess! All these things. My goal is to make it hands on as possible. Numbers will be capped so I can get around everyone. If more people sign up I'll have an assistant.
When I've done this before it works well. The only snag is where people are at different levels and want to go different speeds. But this is where bonus exercises/stretch goals can set challenge for those racing ahead.
i would say the top 3 things I’ve acquired are pens, notepads and keyrings. Some of the pens though are like really more just novelty items for promotional purposes than something you would actually use to write with (1 is 50cm tall with a hand on the top of it) - from a hand hygiene course I went to.
I went to an infection control course once that had pens that doubled as spray bottles of alcohol gel. Also got a key ring that’s a bottle of alcohol gel.
I also went to a blood transfusion course one time and got fridge magnets that had important facts you need to remember for blood transfusions, a reusable bag, that when folded back into its pouch takes the shape of a drop of red blood, I got a stress ball that is a big red blood cell, a note pad that has the blood bank logo and contact details at the very bottom, a red blood drop plushie, and I also got a really useful little book with all the information I could possibly need for doing blood transfusions. It’s still sitting on my bookshelf 6 years later and I still look at it from time to time to remind myself of stuff.
The transfusion book is probably my favourite freebie because it’s really relevant to my job. But some of the other items were still novel and also bring a little moment of joy acquiring them.
One point I’d make is that you can’t use random objects to be the main attraction, or main value of your course. The value still has to come from what it is you’re actually teaching, it needs to be really relevant, and teaching stuff that people in the industry actually want to know about, and take value from.
