IT being Information Technology.  You work in this business, you can forget what it is like for people who do not live and breath it every day.  People who are just trying to get their work done.

I remember sitting at the Lotusphere general session a few days ago, watching someone demonstrate how a user will access their own mashup from within a portlette while they collaborate via Quickr and Sametime with associates in the finance and legal teams....it made me chuckle.   How many users have you seen that would do that.....ever do that?   I just spent 15 minutes explaining to an end user where the task bar was on the Windows interface, what the desktop was, how to launch Internet Explorer from the Start button.   Mashups and portlets...forget it.  To collaborate, if they are faced with these options, they are going to pick up the phone just like they have done for the last decade.

Sometimes we forget that not everyone in the world works for IBM, or Microsoft, or Google.  Not everyone spends 18 hrs a day in front of a computer and loves it.

If you turn conversations with customers away from technology, put it into a context the user understands, into a discussion of how your product can enable a business process or methodology, then the lights go on.  Everyone was excited.  

I know its hard. I am as guilty as the next, probably worse.  I am going to try to make this  my  New Years belated resolution.  Avoid the insanity of IT when talking to a customer.  Leave the Mashups for suppertime.