What’s something you understand that most people find confusing, and how can you explain it in the most concise way possible?

Write of Passage Shiny Dime challenge week 2

I’ve worked in telecommunications for most of my career. Loved being a geek who understands it all, talking tech with the best of them even though I was usually mistaken for the secretary when people phoned our office in the 90s, ahem.

I got older though and more commercially astute, wondering why strategic suppliers trying to get me to spend millions seemed to almost pride themselves in using difficult to digest language, rather than talking problems and benefits.

If I was more cynical I’d say perhaps it’s deliberate, “we” as an industry can’t make it sound easy or else people wouldn’t value it? I think that is true of a lot of office type stuff.  Maybe I’m the stupid one here, lifting the veil may hasten our demise.  I embrace change though, always have. Clarity and value matter. Your audience matters.

I wonder how many ridiculous acronyms I can rattle off without running out of steam, ones I understand and at one time used frequently in my daily work?;

GSM, GPRS, 3G, 4G UMTS, CDMA, HSDPA, MNO, MVNO, MVNE, SIM, eSIM, ICCID, IMSI, IMEI, PLMN, MSISDN, CLI, APN, 3GPP, ITU, MCC, MNC, API, ADSL, VDSL, HLR, VLR, GGSN, HTML, WAP, WML, CSS, HTTP, POP3, IMAP, SMTP, LTE, BCE, TAP, CDR, MMS, SMS, M2M and of course IoT.

The answer is 45!

So that last one, IoT,  stands for Internet of Things, a name for a technology type that I have been intimately familiar with for the last decade. Oh and no, it’s not about fridges that can talk to us.

The term Internet of Things (IoT) refers to lots of different devices (things) that can collect information from the world around them via sensors. They can connect and send that information as data over the internet to a service or application. This can be done privately, where only you can see your own data, or it can be combined with others to provide valuable anonymised insights used to identify trends and make predictions.

For example, your smartwatch is an IoT device that collects information to monitor your health and fitness levels and stores months of data in your own private account not accessible by anyone else. As technology improves and related services evolve, you may  opt in to be monitored by a medical service to spot issues before they become serious, alerting you if you need to get help. Taken further, if your information becomes part of a wider study, trends can be spotted in health and demographics which provides industry and government with insightful information to tailor their services and build solutions to solve real-world problems.

IoT is about connecting everyday devices to the internet, allowing them to gather data, communicate, and make our lives easier. Collecting live data to offer personalised insights and, when shared, can help shape better services, from healthcare to urban planning. IoT turns ordinary objects into smart tools for improving personal wellness, efficiency, and even societal challenges.

IoT is an enabler in making technology work for more of us; creating a smarter, more responsive world that can eventually anticipate our needs and address real-world problems efficiently.

Real time data allows us to make smarter decisions.

---

So as I hope was obvious from the sub header, this was the week 2 prompt from Write of Passage in their Shiny Dime challenge. Again we were encouraged to constrain ourselves to around 500 words, and this week I managed 557 which I am super proud of! Tell me if you think I’ve made sense of IoT for you!

I love that we are being asked to practice distilling our writing. To be more succinct. To get under the skin of what you want to say. Ensure that you don’t get sidetracked and end up conveying too many ideas in one essay, risking that you confuse your point.

I’m very much enjoying writing at least once each week. I’m loving the clarity and consistency of having this weekly publishing deadline. I have started some systems to hopefully make the process even easier going forward. Notes I write when I come across things that resonate, and the thought trains I have on why I care so much about the process of moving towards ikigai.

I have been hugely riffing this week on the theme of WHAT PROBLEM I HAVE SOLVED, and/or the problems that we have yet to solve, and who I most want to help and I think I am getting clearer on that and nearly ready to do an essay justice on that topic I feel.

I’m Sarah, seeking ikigai, and would love to hear from you xxx

PS - This week I was listening to the sublime Mr Bowie;