December 22, 2019

Communication protocols redux

Sent by Jonathan Stark on December 24th, 2019

In my last message I used a metaphor to illustrate the difference between:

Having valuable information, and
Being able to communicate that value to another person.

Ironically, the metaphor I used was software-related and therefore didn’t communicate the message to non-software people.

Here it is again:

Communicating with an audience is like programming against an API… The information in your database might be correct, but it’s not going to make it into the other system if you don’t use the right calls.

The terms “API”, “database”, “system”, “programming”, and “calls” all have very specific and expressive meaning to developers. Not so much for other folks.

If you want to communicate with someone - especially a potential client - it’s best to use their language to get the message across. It’s not enough to merely have the information - you have to transmit it successfully to someone else for it to become valuable to them.

Yours,

—J