Communication
From POINTS
Talking to I.T. People
Communication can be a bit of a problem. I.T. people tend to have a lot of jargon and it's easy to get lost while talking to them. However, this is just as frustrating for I.T. people. Often we're trying to be patient and explain something which we may find intuitive whereas explaining it could be a mission. We're often given lessons on how to communicate with the outside world, but the reverse is never done.
I was at a meeting where a couple of teachers thought it funny to make a white noise sound every time they couldn't understand what was being said. I gritted my teeth through this as it was very frustrating, especially when you can see the I.T. people trying desperately to help these people. A bit of courtesy here. If it interrupts the flow of things, you're probably just annoying someone who is trying to help you. Instead, ask for clarification if you need it.
Use of language is a problem. We I.T. people generally don't like magic boxes and avoid terms that put this impression across. For example, when we're programming and we're using the number pi, we don't put the number "3.14" all the way through our code, we would define a variable as "pi" and use that through our code. Suddenly it's not just a number. It's got context.
Why is this pertinent? Using terms like "teleport" rather than "link" put a magic box around things again. Don't do it! They don't help anyone understand any better and we do make efforts to try make things understandable.
The same words may mean different things to us. For example, when I talk about "hacking", I'm not talking about breaking into systems as the media would have you believe. Instead hacking referred more to seeing a need and "hacking" something up to fulfill that need. So take the materials you have, and come up with a solution. Hackers have built the Linux Operating System, the GNU tools, helped develop the BSD Operating system, developed Firefox etc. There was a hacker community before the media got a hold of the term. Instead, the term "Cracker" or "Phreaker" should be used to describe anti-social behaviours normally associated to the term "Hacker".
If you're unsure of a term, ask us to explain it to you.
A lot of the frustration that comes up when communicating with each other can be mitigated if keeping in mind some very simple concepts.
