A Beginner's Guide to Tech Talk

For tech PR and marketing newbies

Are you a tech PR firm with a recent grad on your team? Are you a marketing pro who is making the switch to technology? Have you been working with tech companies for a while but want to make sure you're up to speed on terminology?

Welcome to A Beginner's Guide to Tech Talk. We welcome beginners, pros and students alike to add to this list of terms everyone working in tech should know.

I, Amy Ziari, started this wiki after I wrote a post on my blog titled "A Beginner's Guide to Tech Talk" and gave some simple terms everyone should know to avoid potential embarassment. A commenter suggested I start a list and here we are. Please feel free to pass this wiki around -  http://prtechnewbies.pbwiki.com - so we can avoid blank stares in agencies and corporations across America.

The Rules:

1. Keep it simple and avoid jargon

2. Use examples if a term is complicated for beginners to understand

3. Link to outside resources to add needed context

Hint: You may want to use correct grammar and spelling. Because there are probably a lot of AP Style nerds who are going to be reading this. Just a tip. Got it?

802.11n: No, it’s not a radio station. And it’s not a computer serial number. 802.11n is the next standard of wireless speed and security that is poised to take the world by storm in the next few years. It’s not officially ratified yet, but enterprises are rapidly adopting it to increase their efficiencies, lower costs and create increasingly more mobile workforces.

API: Short for Application Programming Interface. Without getting too far into the nitty gritty programming stuff, an API allows a developer to build applications off of original software. An API can either be closed off or made public. In PR, you'll most likely need to know what an API is when you are working with a company who has an open API or has built an application off of one. Facebook and iPhone apps are the result of open APIs. 

App: Short for application and usually used in the context of a Web application that is accessible via your browser. There are also apps designed for specific devices. Think iPhone.

B2B and B2C: Technically, these terms aren’t relegated to tech but they are important terms to know. B2B stands for Business to Business, a business that creates a product/delivers a service to other businesses. B2C is when a business delivers a product/service directly to customers. 

CTO/CIO/CSO: These stand for Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer and Chief Security Officer respectively, and all are members of the executive suite. Some companies have these positions, some don’t. Usually, the bigger a company gets (or depending what industry it is in) the more likely it is to have these positions. There is also the CISO (Chief Information Security Officer).

The cloud: A trendy (but increasingly meaningless) term that refers to the Web in terms of information processing and storage. It’s the difference between Word and Google Docs.

RFID: Stands for Radio Frequency Identification. Ever been on a toll road and seen people zipping by in a lane for people who have special passes? Those folks most likely have an RFID tag in their car. An RFID tag can be attached to pretty much anything and allows that something to be tracked using radio waves. U.S. passports also now have RFID tags that store  all the information in your printed passport. Neat, huh?

SaaS: If a business/product application is in the “clouds,” it can be referred to as Software as a Service. Salesforce is a great example, as is pretty much any 37Signals product. It is one component of the “cloud.”

Silo: An information silo is when information in a system is incapable of interacting with another system. For example, if a city’s transportation system kept track of the locations and expected arrival times of all its buses but digital displays at bus stops only showed the pre-scheduled arrival time, the systems would exist in information silos. The data was not shared across the systems.

SOA: Service Oriented Architecture refers to a system architecture wherein the different components can “talk” to one another and are integrated instead of data living independently on their own. It is a solution for information silos.

Social Bookmarking Sites: Web-based sites that allow users to bookmark Web pages and share them with others in the process. KeeMedia is one such site catering to the of the PR community, and some of the most popular non-industry specific sites include Delicious and Ma.gnolia. Social bookmarking sites can be great resources for researching technology topics, as users are usually very tech savvy and so the pages that tend to get bookmarked are as well. The result is an online library of sorts of articles and Web sites that have already been sifted through by your peers for importance.

VAR: Stands for Value-Added Reseller. As part of the distribution process, many tech companies don't sell directly (or only) to end-users, and instead/also to VARs. VARs are companies that take a tech product created by another company and integrate it into some larger offering, which is therefore deemed "value-added" in relation to the original offering. A lot of times, you can find VARs listed on a company's Web site under the term "Partner." Take a look at Cisco's Partner page for an example.

VC: A good portion of the tech industry hinges on funding. And VC (venture capital) firms are the way companies get the dough they need to forge ahead with their business plans. There is also angel funding, which is not done through a firm, but individual investors.

Webinar: A tool used often in marketing, especially B2B tech. A Webinar is a Web-based live demo where a company can make a presentation on a given topic as part of the sales and/or communications process. A Webinar also allows the presenter to interact with the audience, answering their questions in real-time.

Widget: Essentially, code that can be embedded anywhere across the Web. This is important in marketing, as it gives audiences the opportunity to interact with a brand and literally embed that brand (or idea, or campaign…) into their own social networks/Web sites. Widgets are great for the marketer because they’re an innovative method to engage audiences and maximize the conversion ratio, a major metric that marketing campaigns and marketers themselves are commonly judged on. 

WiMAX: The standards-based technology that enables delivery of last mile wireless boradband access as an alternative to wireless broadband like cable and DSL.  WiMAX provides fixed , nomadic, portable and, soon, mobile wireless broadband connectivity without the need for direct line-of-sight with a base station. This emerging technology is slated to succeed WiFi networking.