Okay, geeky types, here’s a shot across the bow: you all need to do better at communicating technology to your clients in terms they can understand.
There’s a long history in Information Technology of the “Wizard of Oz” mentality — you know, make ’em think this stuff is incredibly complex and that only I, the Great Wizard, can understand it all.
And you know what? It is pretty complex, so it’s an easy sell. From networking knowledge to servers to transfer protocols to desktop/browser issues to graphic design to interfaces to programming — and there are more but this sentence is getting too long — a good Web consultant needs a lot of expertise in a lot of areas.
If you’re even average at what you do, you are The Wizard, and you don’t have to show off to prove it.
Here’s the issue: business folks don’t need to know what AJAX stands for, but they do need to know what it can do for them. They’ll glaze over when you start to talk about Ruby on Rails, but they need to know whether it will really speed application development — and if that’s a good thing or not. Don’t bother detailing the minutiae of LDAP, but make them understand that having central identity management will save everybody a lot of headaches in the long run.
In other words, instead of hoarding your own power, you should be helping them to make smart technology decisions. And then they’ll really think you’re The Wizard.
