Annoying Geospatial Buzzwords
I’ve put a jar on my desk that I must put money in every time I say either “consume” or “rich client”. I can’t stand either term and people use it so often it gets slammed in my head. I feel dirty every time I say consume in a presentation.
People just come up with new words to describe the things we’ve been doing for years and sound like they are hipper/smarter than the rest of us.
What buzz words really set you off? We need to get a bingo going at the ESRI Developer Summit because I swear they have a buzz word dictionary they use and ESRI Staff gets paid by how many of these horrible words they can use in a sentence.
I hate Web 3.0 and RESTful (even though Sean will probably stop by to tell us it isn’t a buzzword).
Consume is a word ESRI loves to use. I heard it just the other day from our local rep while she was telling us to upgrade ArcIMS to ArcGIS Server.
I consume beer, not web services.
file geodatabase..
“REST API”, the buzzword that kills my buzz.
How about “leverage”? I hear that one all of the time and wonder why people don’t just say “use”.
I leveraged my car in order to consume the freeway.
My old boss always said he wanted to liaise with us.
“Lets liaise about the database this afternoon”
Argh I just wanted to punch him.
I come across “ingest” alot. If you some them together you get “the app ingested the date to leverage rich content etc etc”
Manifold is a buzz word.
I think legacy is a buzzword at least how its used.
Although I don’t currently have anything actionable in the buzzword space, I’m sure I’ll grow that market once I have a look at the Where 2.0 website.
BT
One of my coworkers objected to my use of the word ‘powerful’ to describe a product. He’s right, it’s overused, and excuses the lack of a detailed description of actual software/hardware capabilities. I think you can also get away with ‘use’ most of the time in place of ‘utilize’.
Probably ESRI doesn’t care, unless you’re a rich client consuming their products.
Whoops, the last word should be “services” of course!
‘best of breed’ grinds my gears. GeoBrowser is growing old too.
I don’t care much for “space” as in “These are the latest developments in the web space”. I don’t much like “metrics” or “dashboards” either. I can take or leave the term “geospatial” too.
“Software or Hardware Agnostic”…..there has to be better terminology…This one for sure burns me…
geospatial
Ajax-enabled
DMZ
neogeography.
Still trying to sort out that one out.
Wasn’t too long ago when GIS was considered a buzz word. (er, buzz acronym)
ArcThis
ArcThat
“GeoExplorer” (and variants)
“virtual globe” (really an extension of annoyance with “virtual” anything)
“COTS” and “GOTS” (although not specifically GIS-related)
I’m right there with Ed on “best of breed”
“vendor neutral”
And, uh, “geoblogger” (grins sheepishly)
Great thread.
“geoenabling” (seen in one of ESRI’s newsrags, a wonderful source of geobuzzwords).
And I’ll second “leverage”.
(Also, what the heck is “cybercartography”? )
Enterprise Solutions!
ESRI
And what about “state-of-the-art”?
Or “SOA”?
Anything with the word Open in it – top of the list
Open Architecture
Open API
Provision
Provisioning
Leverage Investment
ROI
Best Practices (who says they are best)
Interoperability (Only if you buy only our stuff)
OpenLayers.
GeoRSS.
Another vote for ArcThis and ArcThat. I can still remember the days that I thought “Arc” meant something.
Agile Software Development – what? As opposed to arthritic code scribbling?
A few more:
“Rich Internet Application”
“User Experience”
“Data Fusion”
Any variation of “operational picture” (”common”, “user-defined”, etc.)
Open Source – Okay I use a couple of tools from time to time but call them by name (FWTools). Does anyone really rely on this (outside of the OS developers)?
Access – Why did microsoft have to name their database program with a word that can be a noun, verb, or even an ajective.
What is even more annoying than the buzzwords themselves are the people who use the buzzwords around PMs to influence the project – 99% of the time negatively.
Got me going now – let me just reference the latest ArcNews:
lets see:
upsurge, framework, powerful, integrates workflows, enterprise environment, server oriented solution, facilitate, near real time, real time, empowering constituents, platform, optimize databases, etc. etc.
That’s just the cover.
Hey, no fair breaking out the ArcNews! It may be shorter to list the non-buzzwords!
I think many of these so called buzz words arent really buzz words. To me, at least a buzz word is a word thats both loaded and hollow. In fact, I think a buzz word is defined as a word that has lost its meaning from over use. As an example GeoRSS is what it is and tangible.
Geospatial is the biggest buzz word and as a geographer I hate its use and implication. It is the semantic joke of geography.
People who respond to anything you say with: “Well, my problem is … ” After the third of fourth time, you realize their problem set far exceeds the universal solution set.
“Neo-geo” got my vote it’s not only over used, loaded and hollow it’s wrong! I must say I got a good laugh from Paul B.’s comment I remember that too…”Arc”, they should just go back to “Mc”, like McGIS and McServer. And if we are going to quote literature, and I use the term loosely, then lets not forget the worst of the worst…you guessed it Directions Magazine, and for an example try this literary marvel. http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2673
I Hate “Neogeogrphy” with a passion!
I have to throw my hat into the ring!!
I dislike the term “neography”.
And starting to dislike the “Arc” in front of everything….Arc-are-us format.
KoS
+1 for Neogeography.
I propose the introduction of a new geospatial buzz word for 2008:
Geoiness.
Another vote for ‘agile’ here.
Also like to add:
Spatially-enabled
Locatially-aware, or Location Awareness.
That Directions article totally had ArcNews beat. Seriously- try to find the non-buzzwords.
I hate Neo-anything: Neo-cons, Neo-nazis, neo-feminist, neo-marxist, Neo-Geography, it’s all neo-idiotic.
Neo from “The Matrix” is about the only exception.
this is Neo-Kyle’s last neo-blog post
Oh how I hate the writing at Directions Magainze. The whole organization over there is based on buzzwords. I swear they search google for buzzwords and then blog about them.
Oh my eyes on that Directions Magzine article
Technology Convergence
Market Horizontalization
Information Fusion
Save us from these wackos and their words.
I think Fusion is when you want to say Mashup, but don’t want to sound like a young hacker. Replacing one buzzword with another.
Agile is such a buzzword. Coming up with a new term to market something that we’ve been doing for years. I guess that is what Tim O’Reilly has been doing with his outfit.
Where 2.0? What do they take us for, idiots?
These just annoy they hell out of us:
(with help from my staff)
GeoWeb
The Long Tail
Enterprise
Framework
API
Paradigm shift
Low hanging fruit
Ballpark figure (what someone says when they have no clue about what something might cost)
Kool-aid
ROI
Immersion
Eyeballs
Anything 2.0 (or now 3.0)
Value added
Mission Critical
Benchmarking
Carbon Footprint or Carbon Neutral
Smart Client
Mashup
Thanks for the reminder Lefty
NGDI, SDI and all their friends!
I just got hit with another one:
“fine-grained control”
How about:
portal
loosely coupled
monetize
blog
Ide-ating
I vote for ‘agile,’ ‘mashup,’ and ‘open’
@Tom: What should I call my thing here if blog is a buzzword?
My vote goes to ‘user experience’. When I use software I don’t have an ‘experience’, I’m just using a tool. Also, mashup, leverage, web2.0, and geo* (except for geocaching. That’s fun!)
I forgot to add: when people use nouns as verbs. “Have you myspaced your resume?”
“High Level”
As in, “I understand that from a high level”. What that really means is you don’t know what you’re talking about.
@Jim: Which dovetails (can I use that word?) nicely with “Low Level”
As in “You don’t need to know what the application is doing there, it is all low level code”. What it means is that the user has no idea what is going on there.
Our enterprise GIS solutions hook into our backend databases to provide real-time information giving us the competitive business edge. It’s all about the geographic approach\advantage.
@James Fee: You really hung a curveball for me James. At least I didn’t say “blogger”.
POLL: Seems like a bunch of people are really PO’ed about these words. Can I get a pledge that you’ll never use them again?
Perhaps in addition to a Bingo chart of buzz words we should consider the preferred alternatives to each?
@james…
What is “fine-grained control”?
Very small control? Smooth control?
Just curious, new one to me.
KoS
I totally agree with the Agile vote. Same goes for scrum.
LBS
GeoINT
Sustainable
“Ordinary” when used with “people”. I’ve never met an ordinary person.
my favourite buzzword is “buzzword”!
Anything about new “solutions” for your GIS/whatever “toolbox”.
My toolbox has saws, hammers, and screwdrivers, not expensive consultants’ scripts and software.
F**k it, we’re doing Web 5.0
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930
I remember an ESRI rep at a state-wide GIS conference kept going on-and-on about “fine grained objects” vs. “coarse-grained-objects.” I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever coded anything in his life.
Reminds me of Jack Black:
“Those that can’t do….teach.
Those that can’t teach…teach Phys. Ed.”
I like the Manifold ones:
- retard
- legacy dinosaur
- idiotic
- moron
and those are just what they call their customers!!!
I’m definitely guilty of using a whole mess of these buzzwords listed above… But in at least several of the instances cited, there’s no genuinely simple or elegant way to convey exactly the same meaning without either using more words than the buzzword itself, or without inventing some new construct (and thereby expanding the ‘buzzwordosphere’)
pretty much all of the above, tho, no one seems to have mentioned…
vanilla!
http://christophercotton.com/monkeyboys/images/dilbert-buzzword.jpeg