[Sigia-l] Buzzwords (was microcontent - a definition?)

[Gent, Andrew]

>>Maybe it's a case of the need for empathy - to not judge our clients
but to 
embrace their culture of  enigmatic nomenclature...

>>I have worked in the most buzzword of environments, such as consulting
for 
the marketing departments of  large technology based companies where
Three 
Letter Acronyms are plentifully,  HP and Intel being two very good 
examples.

>>I'm sure I might have said 
the following with a straight face...   "This is the IA for HP's IPG
TPM 
for SMB in EMEA."   

What is truly frightening is that I must confess to recognizing at least
half of that statement. But that brings up another issue when dealing
with large buzzword-loving corporations (which I think HP qualifies as).
You still need to recognize and address the gap between the client and
the user. 

Understanding the lingo becomes a badge of honor in large companies, but
this creates a two-caste system where the majority of users are left
out. I have sat through a number of meetings where statements like the
preceding are flung about and everybody nods knowingly, only to have
many attendees admit after the fact that they didn't have a clue what
was being said.

I develop taxonomies for corporate internal audiences. My "clients"
often insist on including their own internal nomenclature. And I
invariably suggest replacing it with -- at minimum -- industry-standard
terms. The clients have a hard time recognizing and acknowledging that
the chic terms they so lovingly polish are completely opaque to large
portions of their audience. But I believe that is part of my job. I
suspect it would be even harder for outside consultants who don't have
the benefit of having worked "in the trenches" and having first-hand
knowledge of the gap between client and user.

I have long believed that a more practical solution (than creating
buzzword-ridden properties that will be expensive to maintain) is to
develop a synonym engine to map buzzwords to "real" terms. For example
EMEA = "region:Europe", "IPG" = "technology:printers" OR
"technology:cameras" etc.

Andrew Gent
Lead Knowledge Architect
HP Services
1.603.884.7475