 with us here today is Italo Vignoli he is the director of the open source initiative and is doing marketing for the document foundation excuse me okay and today he will tell us something about storytelling as a communication technique and about lessons learned in deeper office and open office with this technique thank you very much okay hi everyone I don't know if you have ever heard one of my speeches you may wonder why I have a brain in my hands it's always nice to have a spare one you may need it I'm old so that but I'm talking about perception so we are the brain I will show what happens when you're speaking and when you're communicating to your brain first of all I I would like to to start with a I've I've estimated my these percentages because I think it's important to as we are communicating we are communicating about software I think we should agree on the fact that 1% of the entire scenario are developers 2% are contributors 3% are software house employees then you have 4% of conscious users which makes 10% of the of our listeners that understand what we say and then around 90% that do not understand and do not have any clue about software this is unfortunately the reality open source software speaks to I would say usually to the tree top 3% ignores the other 97% because majority of people speaks technical jargon we don't communicate we we speak these are two different terms so first what is very important we have learn to steal we have a very nice example the company is based in one Microsoft Plaza in Redmond you can probably guess the name of the company they do fantastic marketing steel it's useless to reinvent the wheel do what they do do it better now we come to the left and right brain so when we if you if you talk to people let's say that this image is very nice because it shows exactly what happens in your brain if you present you are talking to this right hemisphere if you talk you're talking to the left hemisphere let's say that the right hemisphere is the creative part and the left one is the accountant part so these are as you can see these are accountants if these people get something they through this area which is called corpus callosum they they tell to the accountants you have to file that in the memory if you speak directly to the accountants they they don't even file into the memory so we have to find a way to communicate and storytelling it's one of the techniques that can help us I've seldom heard anyone speaking about free software and telling stories about free software this was Benjamin Franklin so not not another reasoned guy and they say tell me and I forget teach me and I remember involve me and I learn I seldom hear speeches about free software that are involving many are informing are telling a huge number of concepts but they're not involving people everyone should be familiar in Germany with this guy as a kind of a key role in the in the history of the human in the human history and even a stronger role in in Germany he was a storyteller so he was a priest you know and he published 95 thesis this is not storytelling the thesis are boring he realized that that was targeted to his peers was not targeted to the the the population so what he did he made the story actually translated the story the story was already already there it translated the Bible in German of course we are speaking about something that happened 500 years ago but this is storytelling people could read the story that were backing their their religious beliefs and based on this not on the thesis there was a war there was a schism so that shows you that the power of storytelling even if it of course I say storyteller but it was not aware of being a storyteller it was just a smart guy that found the best way to communicate with the people you wanted to communicate with good would you prefer to to explain lock-in would you prefer this image or a 20 minutes speech about the details of the lock-in technology this shows you I mean you change operating system and you change the window this is lock-in it's a lot more immediate it's easier so we we have stories in in open source I think in free software I think it's we have to find the stories it's not always easy but in some cases you can build the stories and in this case I will tell you about the story that we have built for LibreOffice I think that LibreOffice has been a rather successful project in term of marketing of course we we didn't manage marketing only in the traditional way of course we we had product releases launches all that is let's say all that manual they tell you that you have to say but then we build a story that was a hero LibreOffice based on some concept a copy left licensee the independent foundation the large number of volunteer developers the community dream project fighting against I'm I've not written the name but you can probably imagine who is this guy representing with an objective that was deemed the showing that the community could sustain an independent project that corporation were not able to sustain an independent free software project at least in a way that corporation would like to to sustain a free software project so controlling the community because the problem is that corporation do not understand the community and we had a rather strong fight against a corporation and it's not Microsoft in this case that wanted to control the open office community and we got we LibreOffice was the open office project becoming independent from corporations and we had a corporation fighting us and at the end we we got the objective because after six year in in a month we will be six years old LibreOffice is still alive is growing is stable is improving so we have shown that with that with a determined community a free software project can stay independent from a single corporation of course we have a number of companies support in the project but this makes the the project independent because if you have many supporters you are not tied to a single one that can tell you what you have to do this was the story with Sun and OpenOffice Sun wanted the community to follow the company of course we are speaking about 15 years ago so it was completely different time in history but after 10 years the project was mature enough to be to become independent and the LibreOffice history shows that it is possible it was possible it is possible of course to reach the objective you have also to understand that you have to start communicating in a different way otherwise people would have not follow us we have created the enthusiasm of being in a in an independent free software project you have to motivate people and you have to motivate them on a daily basis so a few example where we use storytelling instead of the boring corporate speak and that was the area where we were able to engage the highest number of people so we were captivating people was curious about an independent project staying alive independently the opposite is bore if you have heard any corporation representative they will tell we do we are we it's always very inbound is always very reflective they always say we do we always said we together have done we can do together as a community and with the help of everyone we can reach the objective we have used conversation no statements although we have statements in press releases but we tend to have statements that are not we are doing this and we are doing that but it's they are trying to add some news to the story we are always looked outward and not inward we have looked at the community outside and we still are trying to engage a larger community this is always a challenge for a free software project but at least with we have been able during the first year to to to engage a large community we started with 20 developers after six years we have the number of people that have contributed to the code is over 1100 so we we engaged at least over 1100 developers we have an average of 300 active developers per year just by chance Microsoft declares on their annual report that they have 300 developers active on Microsoft office we have used narrative not words not we do we are the leading the best the and a lot of anecdotes I use a lot of anecdotes in my speeches I don't even remember which are the true ones and the false one the invented but I don't mind I mean I know which are the good one and the and the wrong one but for instance when people ask me why you started in free software and said it because I didn't want to use outlook which is a weird answer I'm not a developer I'm not a technical guy it's something that engages you because it's I'm not saying because I wanted to scratch my itch I didn't want to use a proprietary software so I looked for an alternative to the office suite we did this is absolutely true is not is not one of the invented anecdotes I didn't want to use outlook I've never I'm proudly now being able to never use outlook in my life I've used eudora until it was possible and then Thunderbird even on a Windows machine when I was using a Windows machine and on a Mac machine when I was using a Mac now I'm I've switched to Linux which is not trivial for someone that is as a degree as a degree in humanities like myself and we have tried to be entertaining and compiling and real so we have basically and I use these slides a lot it helps in if you think it's visually explaining the difference between the umbrella culture of a corporation staying on top of a product of a project and the mixing bowl this is an American way of representing it the mixing bowl of a community staying together and working together in the same environment it's very easy it tells you in one picture tells 1000 words I know that Apple is not overly popular in free software but for instance they did some very smart things when IBM launched the PC IBM was a big huge corporation at the time and Apple was the small company although they were number one in PCs but IBM was a lot more a lot bigger with this single ad they positioned themselves as the they were welcoming IBM in the PC environment not the opposite so IBM was second after Apple in their environment is a is a way of telling a story you tell I'm already in in the market you are entering my market so welcome IBM position the company with a few words exactly the opposite as that genius of the Sun marketing did by throwing away one million dollars making advertising these are the buses of an American city can you guess which was the city I've said that the name of the city before yes they throw away one million dollars making advertising on the city where 95% of inhabitants works for a single company so if you want to throw away one million dollars this is the worst way and I went to Santa Clara to shake hands to that idiot because I said you know when when you have the opportunity of meeting one paramount idiot you should leverage the opportunity so if you say a concept in words after 72 hours you remember 10% if you say that with images you remember 65% these are of course it's not me telling that these are researches done by medical people psychologist so and actually which is worse according to this guy which is an authority in studying the brain behavior brain interprets each single letter as a kind of image so it creates a problem for our synapses and you can imagine being 62 years old and having a few synapses left which problem causes to me it's less for you but bigger to me anyway I'm joking but for instance if you if you work on emotion you create a way of raising the interest just by a shot of dopamine you don't need to to people to stay awake without any reason you just provide them a shot of dopamine that helps them in staying alive so that is easy for instance this image is so simple instead it doesn't say behave to the dog it says I make it to the fence in 2.8 seconds and you it's very effective this explains a lot about speed so in a world without walls at the end we need windows no one so of course I've tried I mean speaking about storytelling in 20 minutes is not trivial so I've tried to send out some provocative ideas I'm happy it usually I do storytelling trainings in universities is eight hours so 20 minutes eight hours in 20 minutes it's a little bit challenging but I'm finished even earlier than expected the idea is just to give you some some provocations about the concept of storytelling about the fact that when we speak about free software we should become a lot more engaging that we usually are I've heard in many events people boring to death about their projects and they they were very enthusiastic but being enthusiastic is not enough we are the challenger against proprietary software it's useless that I mean free software is better than proprietary the problem is that 97% of the world around thinks exactly the opposite so we have to convince that 97% not the 3% that is already convinced that free software is better than proprietary software and you have to shock that one 97% because otherwise they will never listen to you so explaining vulnerabilities for instance in a technical way as no meaning just give you numbers I totally agree on the fact that you should be picky about the meaning of each vulnerability but I can tell you that for instance comparing LibreOffice with Microsoft Office when we discussed with the I was I said this this morning when we met for the first time me the Italian Ministry of Defense there their question was how do you compare with Microsoft Office in terms of security and I said wrong question the right question is how Microsoft Office compares with LibreOffice because we are one order of magnitude better so you usually compare the worse with the best and not the opposite then I show a chart where nine vulnerabilities against 111 so it it was easy there was no even no additional question on my statement questions now from you yeah thank you very much any questions from the audience over there thank you for releasing the presentation under free license however the Vignoli.org website is not working where I can download it from it's not working intentionally I mean I have another two websites which are working are ItaloVignoli.com and ItaloVignoli.org which are two blocks the org is in English the comm is in Italian this I've registered that but I didn't have the time to set up the blog is it is it available for download from this website sorry is it is the presentation available for download I will make it available yes next week we have the LibreOffice conference in Bernou so I just wait a week because well you've been speaking we get a we got we've been chatting with a friend of mine that we want this presentation to teach the people working in our organizations sure do the proper free software propaganda no problem and I'm happy I've done sessions and I'm happy to do that whenever of course I cannot travel the world for free but if you pay me the expenses I'm happy to do that because I think it's important to and to do a real workshop because that was you know 20 minutes is nothing okay any more questions through Italo okay hi Italo we you said that to do the the advertising and so on it is a good idea to to copy other companies I have noticed that that some projects also copy things like their press releases and I have the sensation that that is not a good idea what is your because they tend to be as you say they the the projects tend to write things that are very corporate very boring etc because they are copying from companies like the press releases that Microsoft does do you think that that is fair they should copy the advertising but not the press releases for example the concept is still like an artist which means get the ideas and improve it of course is not sometimes a boring press release may do its work it depends of course when when I started with open office not with LibreOffice because that was already but open office was releasing three press releases or four press releases per year and I started in Italy to release two press releases per month and I said how can you do that and I said some of them are just boring I know but at least they keep the name open office in the mind of journalists that the name was not there so the first objective was create a kind of mental folder with a with a word open office on it then of course when when the mental folder is there then you can become more sophisticated and I totally agree that it writing all compelling press releases is almost impossible I mean mission impossible let's say that we should have a one every two or three which is really breaking news and the other are feelers it's difficult because real breaking news are difficult to to have but I think that our major opportunity is to I don't know if it's an English word so some can correct me I'll I use the word outbrain Microsoft so which is over overtake them in term of brain that we put into project I don't know if it works in in term of new word because I think that this is one of our opportunities I mean they have the they are conditioned by the stock market so in some cases they will never write something in press releases we have the opportunity we don't have we don't have shareholders we don't have I mean it's a completely different approach we can be a lot more freewheeling in in our creativity and find ways of writing stuff which is completely different of course not to the point of shock in the journalist because you know that if you shock the journalist then the press release goes into the the trash which is not our objective shock it a little bit so it reads it but not to the point that and do you have any like collection of good storytelling examples for like open source free software or in general because like also maybe more in general like I mean the liberal office you show this example but of course I know one project almost only one not being a developer I I I can only know the project I'm working inside but I think that every even every developer as his own stories the problem is that if you look at code in term of code then you don't have any story but if you look at the fact that you have sold maybe a bug that was there has been there for 12 months and everyone was waiting for the bug to be sold then there was companies stuck here I mean you have a way of building the story even on a bug imagine the guy that sits on a behind a desk and waits for you to solve his damn bug that doesn't allow him just because it was a bug of liberal office to insert an image centered on a on a table cell that guy would kiss you so you know even on a on a stupid bug you can build a story anymore but you have to think about story and not you know code is fundamental but code unfortunately sorry to say that but code is boring but code can be made nice because then there is people waiting for the code and that brings a story behind it any more questions in the audience okay then thank you very much it other again for your talk thanks thank you