You're all aware of the TACD Roundtable on ODF that occurred on Oct 20th (2006) at Harvard's Berkman Center -- Friday, last, last -- from the excellent summary Jamie Love published on Huffington Post. See "J Love's Special Sauce" here on PlexNex.
Below is a progression of slides cut from a larger "web-talk" (designed for when I'm not talking). These better than cover my brief remarks on the day in one of the roundtable panels (click the image below to run the HTML slide show; or right-click the image to either 'Open Link in New Window' or 'Open Link in New Tab')...
The conference organizers asked me to supply the slides from my remarks. Perhaps they didn't realize I was improvising using a borrowed laptop and a few old graphics from here on PlexNex. (I have moved to not using PowerPoint or Impress when I talk: it is distracting unless integrated very gracefully. I agree with Edward Tufte: "Power corrupts, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely." Tufte says that with PowerPoint, format usurps content, and it makes audiences stupid.)
The question at the end of the day was, "What Next?" But I decided to back up and made an attempt to give some historical perspective. (Another thing we did backwards was only offer a demonstration of opening files in OpenOffice as one of the very last events of the day...I was already on my way to South Station as Belgium's Peter Strickx fired up a variety of files for the room. It should have been the day's first item.)
My point was that the standardization of the document file formats fits nicely within the context of both the history of standards (language, money, units of measure, etc.) and the history of disruptive innovation in technology and other fields (disk drives, browsers, operating systems, office suites, popular music genre, etc.). And it was fitting that the ideas about the nature of innovation, which originated mostly at Harvard, were so germane to our situation.
At the Berkman Center, I wanted to make it clear to this non-technical audience that ODF is a natural and fitting progression, a shift toward common sense in the structure of the software industry. The message is, 'This has happened before, and it will happen again.'
This is not new or original thinking (Peter Quinn, Hal Stern, Tim Bray, Tom Adelstein & Bob Sutor have each contributed to my own formulation of the Rogers | Moore | Christensen thread); however, it often prompts an enlightened response from audiences coming new to the OpenDocument Format issue. People brighten -- I've seen it happen repeatedly -- upon recognition that this issue is in fact relevant to them, to here & now. People find this arcane issue of format standards much more interesting when they can see it quickly placed in a context they recognize. Out of context, ODF is duller than dishwater; in context, people can see their document work getting easier and Microsoft's iron grip on software markets fading.
Innovation theory helps belief and builds credibility.
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