Educause 2007: Technology in Plain English

Courtesy of the Chronicle of Higher Education - Educause 2007: Technology in Plain English

Chronicle editor Jeffrey Selingo interviews Lisa Trubitt of SUNY-Albany about communicating with different constituencies on campus. Also of interest is episode 6 of Tech Therapy and a piece titled "Talk to me like I'm a child." Listen for the TV Guide Exercise. There are good and simple lessons to learn here:

When talking with others on their campuses, IT departments at Davidson and Albany ran into common pitfalls. The messages are often highly technical and contain more information than the recipients can digest. Techies are big on acronyms, which others don’t understand. Messages often take a parental tone — don’t do this, you must do that — and they are sometimes contradictory. Techies also like to give people the back story — the whole tale of what it took to get, say, Windows Vista working on the campus.