My buddy, my pal, communicator guru Shel Holtz, was a guest in my grad school PR classroom last week. He empathyzed with one practitioner/student who just can’t seem to relate to her organization’s IT folks.
Shel likened this to when we all worked with printers (what’s a printer, you say?). Shel said it was “common for communicators to know what it meant when a printer said, ‘going four-up, two-over-four, with touch plates and perfect binding.’ We should be equally adept and understanding what IT — the printers of the digital age — are saying.” Awwwww…and you thought you could hire out for those skills.
Do you agree with Shel? Advice for those pulling kicking and screaming into the IT world???
Barbara Puffer, Puffer Public Relations Strategies
Comments
| RE: Knowing Our IT Collaborators |
| Painful as it has been at times, I can’t imagine working on the Web in any fashion without knowing something about the technology. By that I don’t mean just learning the latest geek-speak… terms like 100%zero (the chance of your project succeeding) and IMpause (the annoying silence on the other end of the phone as the person you’re talking to pauses to answer an Instant Message). I have learned over time that IT folks are to be coddled and carefully courted so they will do the really hard technical stuff you invariably encounter. But if your every move on the Web means asking, begging, cajoling and then waiting for some poor IT person to execute your grand text change, you’re in for a very frustrating life. I chose to buy and learn Dreamweaver and I use it every day (in fact I’m tying into it now). I see text in one panel, and html code in the panel above. It’s truly html for dummies. Dreamweaver and some small Christmas gifts to my favorite IT folks gets me by. Now, could you pass me the Java? |
Gerstner’s comments are deere I think John means that perhaps I need Dreamworks for a Christmas gift. Alas, I was learning some elementary HTML over the last few years in my teaching life, and now they added some great new technology where the HTML is all embedded in their screens…I’ll be lazy again. I totally agree…one had better know the basics…throwing you a life raft when you’re drowning is really no good if you can’t haul yourself up onto the raft…at some point you’ll just get too tired treading water and holding onto the side. I hope some others dive into this topic.
BarbaraP
