Type A Learning Agency

Parlez vous "Weberie?"
by Jason Rothstein

Like most of us, I have a set of litmus tests by which I evaluate people I encounter. The majority aren’t applicable to businesses, but one has a lot of bearing on companies within the tech sector: I believe those who can’t simply and clearly explain what they do for a living to a 5-year-old are probably engaged in some kind of charlatanism.

Not long ago, Type A Learning Agency engaged in a little of what we used to call "self-processing" in psychology class. We came together as a group and spent quite a bit of time contemplating the universe and our place within it. Much of our conversation centered on how we wished to be viewed by others, which naturally enough, revolved around how we would describe ourselves.

As a result, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately contemplating what we do – or rather, how to explain to others what we do. Honestly, it's a mess when we try to offer cogent clarification. The English language lacks the capacity to succinctly describe the activities of a company that works on Web and “multimedia” projects. There is no single word or set of words that we have yet agreed on as a culture to define this field of work.

In fact, rather than moving closer to an elegant linguistic solution, our descriptions become increasingly convoluted. Think about more traditional businesses. We have words in our language for things like "bookstore," "bakery" and "butcher." As such, we’re able to distinguish them by more tangible characteristics, such as location (57th Street) or name (Barney’s). Having a common vocabulary allows us to evaluate these businesses against each other by meaningful distinctions like those described above, and more important, by reputation. We know we’re comparing apples to apples rather than “vertical Web integrators” to “Internet-enabled solution providers.”

Of course, I blame the marketers. In the absence of a universally agreed-upon term to describe a business, those qualifiers like “Joe’s” or “Clark Street” aren’t helpful. Instead, companies try to distinguish themselves through complicated strings of meaningless marketingspeak, intended to express their uniqueness over the competition.

Imagine for a moment that the word "bakery" did not exist in English. I might talk to my friend about where I like to get my bread. Perhaps I favor D'Amatos because, unlike the competition, they are “risen dough solutions provider.” My friend, on the other hand, thinks that La Brioche is the better choice because unlike D’Amato’s, they are a “flour, yeast and water integrator.” A little silly, perhaps, but I think it illustrates the fundamental absurdity of the way we, as a profession, attempt to describe ourselves.

Nearly all of us who work in the technology sector have, at one point or another, struggled to tell our parents what we do. While many believe they have trouble understanding our careers because of a generation gap, I don’t think that’s the case. I think my parents would be happier if I told them I was a doctor, not only because they would be happier if I were a doctor, but also because we all know what the word “doctor” means. I can’t find three people who can agree on the meaning of the term “Web design,” let alone on a single word that clearly incorporates it and everything else we do.

I often wish that English had the capacity of Spanish or French to simply add a suffix onto a noun and create a place. We could go to the patisserie to get our pastries, the lavanderia to wash our clothes and the "Weberie" or the "Interneteria" to get a corporate Web site with database-managed content and integration with an enterprise-wide inventory system.

Those of us who lived through the desktop publishing revolution have faced some of these issues before. Indeed, the very term desktop publishing is itself anachronistic. Without significant quantities of publishing not substantially produced on the desktop, we no longer need desktop as a qualifier. Unfortunately, this field we now work in has no base term like publishing to which it can revert, because we’ve never agreed upon just what it is we do.

This conclusion frustrates me, but in a way, it’s also exciting. It’s indicative of just how revolutionary the Internet and Web has been to our way of life, and our way of thinking. We fail to find an adequate analog for the Web because there isn’t one. We are not simply publishers in a new medium. I truly believe we are restrained by this lack of a solution to our language problem.

The marketingspeak we use will never be understandable to a 5-year-old, and thus as an industry, we will always be regarded with suspicion as long as we continue to use it. Time, we can hope, will provide an answer. Meanwhile, when you next call me at Type A, don’t be surprised if I answer the phone saying: “Le Weberie. Vous avez besoin d’assistance?”

This article originally appeared in e-Prarie on 6/25/01.