Without desecrating our professional altars by suggesting that we 'dumb-down', I believe that the 'message' needs to be communicated better in both content and in style. I don't just mean straight-talking or randomly using 'cool', 'slick' and 'next-generation' when describing something as potentially life changing as neural computation or nano-technology. But rather stepping back to re-assess what we say (and do) in context of its impact on our immediate professional and social environments before going for world domination!

Clients are people too

Clients are everyday people with everyday problems and mostly basic, sometimes boring, requirements and it is our job to support them without fuss or having to suffer the waffle or sing-along the gospel of Open-Source, Fair Trade or any other belief. And that comes from spending a lot of time listening to our clients, fixing their problems and meeting their expectations.

If psychologists could only communicate with other psychologists, the world would be a very troubled place indeed (yes, even more so than it is already..). Of course, the counter-argument is the devaluation of a profession, such with psychiatry, by the likes of Dr. Phil, Jeremy Kyle and Paul McKenna and this is not what this is about.

We are all trying to do 'the right thing' but I believe that more effort is needed from us as professionals to establish the true value of what we do against the needs of everyday Joe before finding a way of communicating such value in a shared language.

As information technologists, some of us seem to lack the skill to inform... it is not quite as simple as printing a slick brochure or having a Christmas-tree of a website but it is understanding the market well from both the vendor and consumer sides. Before we inform, we need to listen carefully and hopefully offer relevant products and services and communicate such in such a manner that gets the message across.

Just to be clear, I am not advocating that people such as regulargeek.com need to communicate with my mother no matter how they try to phrase statements such as;

"The general idea is that programmers should be writing unit tests using TDD and refactoring as they continue development."....

... but I think she may stand a better chance with our friends at Plone.org who introduce their website by saying,
 

"A powerful, flexible Content Management solution that is easy to install, use and extend, Plone lets non-technical people create and maintain information using only a web browser. Perfect for web sites or intranets, Plone offers superior security without sacrificing extensibility or ease of use."
 

Openia took its name as a leading advocate of Open Source and we did not mince our words and decided to take on a brand that clearly delivers the message.

Beyond the name however, Openia lives and loves Open Source with its values placed at the heart of everything we do. But what about the client? do they have to 'love' what we do too? and why should they? When it matters and if it matters, we will tell clients about the benefits of using a 'Free Public License' and besides the 'free' part, we tell them how their businesses can benefit from all things Open Source including the freedom to design and develop technology that grows with them, the peace of mind that they are supported by continuous improvements delivered by thousands of professional programmers worldwide.

In essence, many professionals enjoy bearing the standard for a variety of concepts or technologies such as Open-Source in the case of Openia. Yet we must always communicate to the market the benefits of joining the march or it may be a lonesome trek.