Daddy, what do you do at work… in our living room?
As I wrote a few days ago, I have now moved my home office downstairs into the living room. I’ve got myself a mix of new and old furniture at IKEA and created myself a space where I can get work done. I’ve go shelving, 2 computers, internet high-speed extreme (woooouuuuhhhh) and… the TV is at the other side of the room. (I’m not very fond of TV personally, so that works ok).
So that means I may be finishing my work day as my daughter wants to watch TV after her homework is done. So, obviously, the thought of being able to work and watch TV is attractive to her. And what do I do, in the eyes of my daughter? Well, she used to think I played on the computer all day – and that sounded fun (obviously).
But I told her that my job is to help big companies understand and buy IBM software, which runs on computers (she still refers to my Thinkpad as the black one and the iMac as the white one, but that’s another story). I’m not sure she understands yet, or how that can be more important than taking care of horses (her current dream job), but that’s ok. I figure that every year, I can add a little meat to the explanation.
But the same way I sell her what I do for a living, I always take great care to adapt my speech to my audience. Whether it’s to other tech professionals, sales reps, executives, partners or customers. And the first thing that leaves my speech patterns is IBM lingo.
For example, you’ll never hear me say I don’t have enough cycles. I’m not a computer, I’m a person.
I also never say I need some downtime. I say I need some rest. I need to relax. I’m not a machine failing to provide high availability!
By the same token, I also stopped saying I’d take an item offline. If in a meeting or tele-conference, I’ll say let’s talk about it later instead. And no, I’m not off-grid, I’m unavailable.
Why people feel a need to use these terms sometimes makes me think some people would rather be in a movie in year 2056 than here and now. This is not Judge Dread, this is not The 5th Element (although that was a great movie) nor Blade Runner. It’s 2006, it’s america and 99.9% of the real world would never understand what we mean, if we were to bring this language to the streets.
Let’s get real. Let’s speak english. This is the first step to reducing the omni-present techno-babble.
