Eating Spinach and Changing Software

I don’t often let myself get on a riff, at least not in writing, but today I’ll enjoy it.

As I sit in a conference room hearing a slew of really talented people (no, but really talented people, no tongue in cheek) slam OpenOffice.org, it strikes me that getting even technologists to change software or platforms is like getting kids to eat something they don’t like.

It’s a recurring theme now at dinner.

Ben: “I dont’ like this.”

Me: “You haven’t even tried it, and you loved it last week!”

Ben: “But I dont’ like onions.”[Ben has taken the decision that he hates onions.]

Me: “It doesn’t have any onion in it.”

Ben tries the dish.

Ben: “I don’t like it.”

Me: “But you like everything in it: potatoes, carrots, meat.”

Ben: “But I don’t like it.”

The parents who are reading this know the scene well: the child decides before even getting all they way sat down that he doesn’t like the dish. Sometimes, you can’t get them past that, even if it was their favorite dish a week ago.

The same dynamic seems to play for adults who have to change software or platform. Each time the parents or in-laws upgrade the machine and change from, say, Windows XP to Vista, the world is going to end. You’d think that this wouldn’t be the case for technologists, or for business professionals whose livelihood depends on getting customers to change their platforms and by yours instead. But you’d be wrong.

It seems that we’re just as stubborn at 40 as Ben is at 9. We decide before we sit down that we hate OpenOffice, and as a result, everything that’s wrong is OOo’s fault. I’ve given up pointing out that I almost never experience any of the problems they experience.

They have the same problems in OpenOffice that I would have if I were (dimwitted enough) to try to use Microsoft Office. In fact, they have the same problems each time they upgrade form one version of Microsoft Office to another! And while we complain about those, they’re not seen as “stupid,” we just barrel through the learning curve, discovering the cool new stuff, and move on. But if it’s OOo (or any package you didn’t want to use and were forced to use), then it’s the software’s fault, we’re not going to learn, we’ll never like it. As if we’re 9.

Software change. It’s about familiarity. It’s about assumptions on how things work. It’s about expectations. It’s about actually learning the new package. In this case, OpenOffice.org isn’t Microsoft Office — and thank goodness for that! It’s not going to behave the same. It’ll probably convert other files pretty well, about as well as MS Office converts its own files between versions.

But that would be too reasonable a line of thinking. Silly me.

*sigh*

I love OpenOffice.org. A few yearsa go, I had the unenviable task of trying to publish a user manual using MS Office. It was impossible to get it to hold its formatting. Styles were simply suggestions, temporary suggestions at that, and seemed to change with any change in barometric pressure. Later I did a refresh on that document in OpenOffice.org. Styles just worked. They did exactly what they were supposed to do. I could apply styles, change the style, and see that change take effect throughout the doc. MS Office couldn’t do that. I’ve never looked backwards. OOo is king, and happens to be free. If you can’t use it, well, that’s your fault.

Now shut up and eat your spinach.