Experts Don’t Need Jargon
I’ve been copywriting for Ultraspeed lately so had some expert schooling from the Ultraspeed engineers in the terms, jargon and principles of Managed Hosting. I figured it would be high-tech and difficult to understand.
During these clinics my mind sometimes wandered back in time to when my ancestors were Indian sailors (on my mother’s side), blacksmiths in Manchester (on my father’s side), and braves (I have some exciting Native American blood in me too).
What counted as useful technology to my ancestors may have been the spinnaker, the anvil, and the stirrup. Little positive changes like these come about through expertise and experimentation. And most importantly they came about because they fulfilled a need.
Managed Hosting and outsourced IT fulfill a modern need: cutting the nonsense out of peoples’ lives. Innovations make complicated things simple, and it’s said today more than ever we’re thankful for such clarity.
To try and give more clarity we decided to build a glossary of terms on the Ultraspeed website. This was the reason for my jargon tutoring. Together with the engineers I worked my way through the list of definitions so that people without tech backgrounds can still find their way when visiting the site.
During my Managed Hosting clinics I realized that although Mike’s (Ultraspeed’s CTO) graphics aren’t something I’d frame and hang on my wall they perfectly illustrate and map the Ultraspeed system from data-centre to end user. When I asked Richard (Network Engineer) what ‘width’ had to do with indexing he told me simply that the wider the index is the more comprehensive it’d be – of course – and all of a sudden it seemed obvious.
Neither used much jargon but when they did its meaning was clear. A router routes, a server serves, chunklets. Much tech lexicon is verbs made into nouns, which sounds Germanic but comes from visualising how data zips around the network. ‘Seeing’ how something works. I always liked the German word for glove: ‘handschuh’. The confusion comes along when people use terms they don’t understand, and all these mystifying Windows ads about clouds don’t help because they don’t give any explanations at all.
It’s probably not true that any company would confuse their customers into making unnecessary purchases because to sell something well you have to believe in it yourself, but sometimes it seems like their fad-mongering is designed to leave just a shred of wool still dangling in front of peoples’ eyes. And to lift the wool you need clear-sighted people who don’t necessarily believe the hype, unless they can see how it’s justified.
I more or less grasp the jargon and terms of Managed Hosting now, but what I’ve been convinced by is the principle. Firstly you have to have the best tools for the job, and dedicated people. But secondly you need to be a good host and help people find their direction a little. You need to help demystify the virtual world – which after all is your area of expertise – for them.
About David Thomas
David is a freelance wordsmith and talented web copy creator. A person of wide interests, his work ranges from corporate writing in industries such as IT and property management, to children's storybooks. You can follow him on twitter @mylast15letters .