It’s just technology

I was on a panel presentation about blogging and RSS at the Boulder Software Club recently along with Walker Fenton from NewsGator and Howard Kaushansky from Umbria. Very fun time (hey – what VC doesn’t enjoy an opportunity to share their opinion); plus I got two beers out of Brad for managing to say “fuck” twice – both completely in context I might add. What struck me most during the presentation is how much more power the technology which is RSS has when you explain it in terms of what it does rather than what it is. RSS is pretty meaningless beyond a relative small group of techies and frankly no one really cares about the underlying technology – they all care about what they can do with it. Those of us who spend a lot of time talking about RSS/Blogging/Feeds/Aggregators/etc do a shitty job of separating out useless  concepts to most audiences (“RSS” or “XML”) with useful ones (“this stuff helps you do xyz”). Speaking in jargon solicited blank stares; giving examples of what people were doing with RSS to further their business solicited engagement and follow up. As a community of technologists, we should be better at this.