Complicated Electronics in our lives

So my wife is totally put off by the complexity of technology in our daily lives. She serves as a great sounding board for how I should configure things – if it takes more than 30 seconds to explain, or involves more than three steps, it’s too complicated.

This is not to say my wife is dumb – far from it! She’s one of the smartest people I know. But her attention is rightfully towards the things she considers important in her life – her career, her family, herself (I’m not sure of the order here). So exactly where do you see technology on that short list? Only on the periphery. But the sad fact is that technology has (for better or worse) insinuated itself in all facets of our lives, right down to the very essence of our day-to-day activities.

Now that wouldn’t be so bad if the stuff would just work as advertised, but it flat-out doesn’t. Our computers malfunction, we accidentally push Ctrl-O instead of Ctrl-P and haven’t a clue what we started, or our technology otherwise fails us, right when we need it to come through. This then is the 21st century – not quite the Jetsons!

So I’ve sort of dedicated myself to figuring out not just what went wrong, but how to make things right. At this stage of the game, I see that we all need help with our technology. For some, it means you hand your technology over to “Your Expert” and that person makes sure everything works right for you. For others, it means that Your Expert gives you the answers and guidance you need to get your technology working for you.

You see my point – you need an Expert to help you deal with your technology. Unlike just a few years ago, this person doesn’t need to be a wild-haired computer geek with boucoup certifications, taped glasses and a pocket-protector. This person needs to be someone who values good communication – trained public speakers work just fine – and who happens to have an interest in (your) technology. Oh, and a desire to help You. That describes Your Tech Coach here at Practical Help for Your Digital Life® – people who want to help others, and know how to communicate. Notice that ‘technology’ isn’t included? It’s there, but not at the forefront. We’ve figured out how to do stuff that you want to do, and we’ve also figured out how to tell you how – in a way that you can use and understand.

We’re not ‘dumbing down’, and we’re not simplifying – exactly. What we’re doing (in the communications world) is ‘chunking’ and translating. Techno-nerds throw everything into a long sentence with obtuse references. Geeks speak in geek-speak. We take complicated directions, and separate them into parts that you can follow. We take the engineering language, and replace words and phrases into something that most people can understand. We use a lot of metaphors (our members love this by the way) to describe things.

Our goal isn’t to dazzle you with our brilliance, but to talk to you in a common language, and give you the kind of help that you can follow without a degree in engineering. To find workable solutions to the problems everyone faces with modern technology, and to give it to you – the way you want and need it. And so we work hard as tech coaches to help you have a healthy digital life – so you can focus on doing what you want to do with your time, certainly not puzzling out how to work the consumer technology you already own!