[Sigia-l] Tool standardization (was about visio or not to visio)

[Listera]

"Adrian Howard" wrote:

> However great a platform is if the other 5000 seats in an organisation are
> running something else it can be a hard sell to get any official support for
> the platform in house.

You don't often win a war with a single battle. There's almost no reason why
all other 5,000 seats have to be converted all at once or ever. The
principle is/should be kept simple: best tools for the job. Even in the most
rabidly pro-Microsoft orgs you can always find a non-MS oasis, whether in
the art department with Macs or in the server room with Linux.

> Most support skills are platform specific so the IT staff have to be retrained
> or new staff hired. Third party suppliers can get nasty if they see the IT
> department moving away from them. It can potentially cost the IT department a
> lot of time, money and worry so they try and avoid it.

True. But so what? Unless you try, nothing will happen.

If you've been in the industry long enough, you'll have a different POV.
Nothing is written in concrete. Linux came from nowhere and ate a big chunk
of Microsoft's expensive lunch and dinner. Things do change. It doesn't seem
so if you are behind the curve and suddenly it dawns on you that it has.
 
> This isn't a Mac vs PC thing.

I agree.

> The same problems would occur if your introduced a few Wintel boxes into a Mac
> only organisation.

Nonsense. 

People who have been outside the status quo understand far, far better what
it means to introduce non-status-quo equipment than those who have been
ensconced inside the iron walls of uniformity. Mac-only outfits have been
introducing Wintel boxes into their mids for over a decade, whether it was
because one time Macs truly sucked as servers or because they need to check
their content output on Wintel clients or because some proprietary app like
Visio didn't run on Macs. This is absolutely nothing new. It's precisely
because of this that OSX, for example, goes to extraordinary lengths to fit
into heterogeneous networks, I/O formats, etc.
 
> NOTE: I am *not* saying that this is a good thing. All I am saying is
> that it is a situation that often has to be dealt with.

Yes, but why be so fatalistic? The current status quo has *no* inherent
advantage other than the fact that its is currently so. Are you saying that
this will never change? If not, how will it if you or somebody else doesn't
take the first step(s)?
  
> We now return to your normal IA topics (please ;-)

Which brings me back on topic :-) I always give this example but I'll do it
again. Librarians have historically viewed the First Amendment and the
general principle of info access as one of their core responsibilities. For
obvious reasons, it makes sense.

Does it also make sense for people who give shape to information
professionally to consider access issues as one of their core
responsibilities? Are IAs mere implementors of products/technologies or do
they need to concern themselves with issues such as proprietary apps like
Visio, format lock-ins like the Office, content walls like AOL, IP/DRM
restrictions like MS Palladium, P2P architectures like Kazaa, etc? Do we
aspire to be the little automatons with fancy titles who are handed down
their antiseptically approved PCs and apps by the faceless IT manipulators?
Is there any room beyond boxes and arrows for a glimpse of the big picture?
Can IAs ever get to a position of changing (large) orgs by simply towing the
legacy IT line? Can anything change unless you take a small risk with one
argument at a time?

Ziya
Nullius in Verba