My introduction to the jargon of the technology business came in a very definitive moment. It was at an agency dinner the night before the annual sales meeting for my new client: a large, global technology company. During the dinner, the lead copywriter on the account introduced himself and chatted me up for a bit, eventually asking if I had my bingo card for the next day. Bingo card? I asked. Yes, he replied, this client takes buzzword bingo to the next level so you better be ready.
During his opening remarks the next morning, the CMO at my new client uttered words to this effect: "Today, let's drill down across centers of excellence to uncover actionable best practices we can bring to the table and hopefully achieve c-level buy-in. But let's not boil the ocean - if we can kluge some repurposed turnkey solutions, that will be a win win". Huh?, I thought, as the copywriter from the previous night caught my attention and mouthed "Bingo." Welcome to tech speak nation.
It's not surprising that there is so much jargon in Silicon Valley when you consider it represents the crossroads of science and technology, where something new happens on a daily if not hourly basis, and the B school mentality where hyperbolic, too cute phraseology becomes the lingua franca separating MBAs from the great unwashed.
But don't get me wrong, I'm no xenophobe; I appreciate unique cultures and languages as much as the next guy and the origins of tech speak can sometimes be fairly clever. Where else but in the microprocessor business can you 'spin a few cycles' to make sure there is sufficient thought put into a problem? And as a sailor, I really like the idea of an 'all hands meeting'.
It is, however, no secret that lampooning business jargon has become a cottage industry. There are plenty of sites around the internet such as this one on the office life or this more tech oriented glossary which serve as tongue-in-cheek business buzzword babel fish. And in an ironic twist, I once worked with a consulting company (a petri dish for jargon if there ever was one) that developed an application to remove buzzwords from powerpoint presentations.
The one place I've found buzzwords and jargon to be especially counter productive is when technology companies use them while trying to articulate the value they provide to their customers. Too often marketers lazily fall back on pat phrases and tech speak which, without context, fail to communicate anything at all.
The bottom line is this - while buzzwords are a convenient, sometimes comedic shorthand to convey a thought, being able to express a thought in simple language is more often the test of whether you really have something to say.
