A conversation I have been having over the last few years that keep repeating is the problem with using traditional marketing language and simple language itself to craft RFPs and SOWs.  The words just fall apart if the goal is to be able to get across to clients and prospective clients what it is I actually do. People read the words, understanding the general meaning without grasping the concepts.  Sometimes I feel as if I am a professor teaching a Masters level course to 5th graders, the eyes glaze over and the gaze of my students drift to look out the window at people walking by on the sidewalk.  This probably means I am a lousy communicator when it comes to a fast education that is only surface level, like describing the functions of the brake pedal in a car to people who have only ridden a horse.   The irony here is that the technology of search engine algorithms is becoming increasing ubiquitous as the experience of the Web gets folded into smart phones and tablet PCs (iPad lust plug here)

Funny thing about being online all the time as both a workspace as well as a place where I spend much of my non working time my perception of media in general is colored by this fact.  I was having a conversation with a client a few days back in which we were discussing TV ad buys vs. Paid Search Campaigns relative to client budgets, and how fundamentally different the two were.  At this point the differences can be described and laid out in bullet points, but unless you are immersed in the online world, the language to describe these differences falls apart very quickly, and subtleties get lost on a professional who’s entire career has been built on one way media (TV).  You really have to be in the ‘space’ of the online world (Web) to understand how essential the concept of ‘relevance’ is  in search.