Okay I admit it I am lazy. Well, I work four days a week as a developer and another two days writing. I am also good at pretending to be a father and a family man. However, in principle, in another life, in a parallel Universe, where elegance wins over brawn, I simply totally and utterly want to be lazy. When a lazy person, my hero, invented the wheel, the invention was not for the purpose of carrying heavy objects. The purpose was rather to avoid carrying heavy objects. Well, okay I want to be lazy and yet still expect large bags of fluffy green money stuff to buy beer and gadgets and motivate others not to bug me.
The only issue with being lazy is that I need to recreate the Universe to simplify my future. As a developer at an educational establishment, I am involved in creating the future infrastructure for learners. However, with so many Word and PowerPoint documents of various versions, quality of content and general value, we have a system of “What goes in stays in and will not budge even if the toilet overflows”. To exasperate this flow issue the end user expects a modern internet experience and I am afraid that management will realize that you can make an awful lot of money out of reselling and repackaging content in small lumps. So being lazy and wanting to be elegant I am a Jedi master, apart from being a little over weight and having no light saber. Okay, I'm not a Jedi master. I am the wind (do not ask!). So being lazy, instead of churning out processes to convert old to new, I would love to side step the issue.
Many, many commentators have blessed Open Document Format with thumbs up. Now there is an overwhelming reason to use ODF. Support Alan’s laziness. Alan does not want to spend the next ten years digging in the entropy mines. He would rather that end users are open to each other and community spirited. No doubt, you have read that Microsoft is delivering a tool for conversion to and from ODF of its numerous document sub species. This action is a wise marketing move from a perceptive company that is commercially dangerous for its competitors. My advice as always is to be very careful of the license and the exact details of the converted documents. Even slight variations and accidental bugs will generate considerable work for me and mine. So remember support Alan’s laziness, any tool you use for ODF conversion needs to work 100%. Please double-check and verify and then double check and verify and only then use with my blessing as a Jedi master.