Technical Marketers are Socially Challenged
I’m a technical marketer and I’m socially challenged.
Apple’s teaser yesterday reminded me just how foreign I sound in my “work voice” to those who love me. Quick, before the clock strikes 7/10/3/12:
What does Apple mean by, “Tomorrow is just another day. That you’ll never forget.”?
My better half and I discussed this very topic last night. And there I was without my babel fish.
Better half: “Do you know what Apple’s announcement is about? I do.”
Me: “What – iTunes in the cloud?”
Better half: “What does that MEAN? Anyway, I read on Google that they’re releasing the entire Beatles collection…”
I should have said, “iTunes ‘in the cloud’ is like a Pandora version of iTunes,” but I was momentarily stunned. Doesn’t everyone know what “cloud” is? Apparently not. It didn’t matter. My better half accepted my comment as just another example of me talking technobabble and moved on.
My professional target audiences are not so forgiving.
Good marketers know our audience and tailor what we say to each subsegment in a language they understand. But technical marketers have a higher calling. It’s also our responsibility to educate our markets on better mousetraps and best practices. We think we’re making technical concepts easier to grasp with catchy terms (i.e. “cloud”), and easier to remember with three-letter acronyms (TLA).
We’re not.
We need to educate others in common language with words they already understand, using terms they already know if that gets the point across faster. Creating new labels and using analogies that are too abstract creates confusion and gives us humans yet another assignment to memorize.
The first step to “wellness” is admitting that one cannot control one’s addiction or compulsion. I’m a technical marketer and I’m socially challenged. Will you be my sponsor?
SOA Upgrade to British Airways
- British SOA Air
British Airways (BA) is turning to service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Progress Software to connect over 600 different electronic systems and processes involved in getting BA passengers in the air.
BA has more than 250 key applications distributed over 300 locations around the globe, which explains why they chose Progress. From an integration perspective, Progress® Sonic ESB® excels in those scenarios that require the integration and management of hundreds or even thousands of systems. One Progress customer was able to deploy its integration backbone out to 25 locations a day (and can update them in a fraction of that time).
“Moving this to a highly automated environment is a challenge, but SOA quickly proved itself to be the right approach to achieving our goal of a fully agile environment.”– Gordon Penfold, CTO, BA.
Who’s in Charge of the Architecture? You Are.
In Replacing Large Applications – Who’s in Charge?, Kathy Harris at Gartner writes:
Most of the organizations have no real architectural vision for their system. The result is that they are essentially allowing the vendor to establish their architecture. This may be ok in the long run, but for many organizations, it is a de facto decision rather than an active choice.
While many vendors have the expertise to make the right recommendations for their portion of a solution, things become much more complicated when you start integrating their applications with others. Complexity increases exponentially when you consider the changes being made by other departments, in other locations, and by your partners.
The complete picture can be daunting. Great enterprise architects understand that you don’t need an exact schematic of how infrastructure will evolve over the lifetime of the business. Rather, you need to take proactive steps to incorporate flexibility into your architecture. Read the rest of this entry »