A Communicator’s Guide to the Tech Industry

By Eric Emin Wood

Writer Eric Emin Wood shares his tips for communicators who want to learn more about the tech industry.

It’s been close to a decade since I began what became my last job in journalism: writing for, then helping run, the now-shuttered enterprise technology trade website IT World Canada (ITWC) and its sister publications IT Business and Channel Daily News.

Illustrating a big reason I made the jump from journalism to communications in the first place, ITWC was only the latest business-to-business (B2B) publication I had written for that required me to learn about the tech industry well enough to cover the latest announcements, research and products from industry leaders (like the ones I wanted to support!) for an audience of customers and insiders.

The knowledge I gained there has served me well in my subsequent career, which has involved developing internal and external campaigns for enterprise technology companies and technology divisions of other companies. Concepts I initially believed were jokes, like the cloud, Internet of Things and digital transformation, have become part of the corporate lexicon as businesses across the world have adopted them—a pattern playing out with the latest tech du jour, AI.

To help many present novices navigate the tech industry, I’ve compiled the steps I’ve taken to become an expert in it myself. (These apply to any sector, incidentally; in addition to tech, I’ve followed them when writing about financial services, human resources, real estate, urban development, private and postsecondary education, and all three levels of government.)

1. Identify the leading companies and follow them in the news

For tech this is especially easy, since the industry’s leaders all tend to be at or near the top of the Fortune 500. As of this writing they include NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet (parent company of Google), Amazon, Meta (parent company of Facebook), semiconductor manufacturers Broadcom and TSMC, electric car manufacturer Tesla, enterprise software developer Oracle, and Chinese tech giant Tencent, each of which is worth more than USD$1 trillion.

2. Make the industry’s leading publications part of your morning routine:

For the tech industry and its leading outlets, you should learn to distinguish between the following:

• • Consumer technology such as personal computers, smartphones, and smart devices, covered by WIRED, Engadget, The Verge, CNET, Ars Technica, and Gizmodo.
  • Enterprise technology, which is either used by businesses or needed to power consumer goods in the first place, covered by ZDNet, VentureBeat, MIT Technology Review, the Forbes Technology Council, and too many trade publications to count.
  • The business of technology, which is often focused on startups and covered by the likes of TechCrunch, Canada’s own the Logic and BetaKit, and the technology sections of mainstream publications including Bloomberg, Business Insider, Fast Company, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, and The Globe and Mail.

3. Learn the lingo

Do you know the difference between machine learning (algorithms that solve business problems in ways they have not been explicitly programmed to do) and business intelligence (software used by organizations to display the results in reports and dashboards)? What about artificial intelligence (a catchall term for software capable of interpreting events, activities, or data, providing guidance for future actions) and generative AI (algorithms that generate new content that resembles but doesn’t repeat the original material, including text, images, and video)? When learning about the industry, it helps to make note of new terms and have an authoritative source handy when looking them up. My personal favourite is IT services provider Gartner’s Information Technology Glossary, but there are others.

4. Follow the thought leaders

You’ve probably heard about two of Canada’s top tech leaders, Michele Romanow and Bruce Croxon, both of whom became well known through the CBC program Dragons’ Den and are active on LinkedIn. Other tech experts with large international audiences on the platform include Efi Pylarinou, Marcell Vollmer, Kirk Borne, Ronald Van Loon, and Karl Smith, not to mention tech CEOs past and present such as Eric Schmidt and Satya Nadella. Many of tech’s top thought leaders have also migrated to newsletters, which can provide an excellent way to learn about a specific segment of the industry, such as Zain Khan’s Superhuman for AI news, Gergely Orosz’s The Pragmatic Engineer for developer insights into big tech, and ThePrompt for marketers seeking to incorporate the latest tools into their work.

5. Stay on top of trends

Artificial intelligence is only the latest industry craze, and it’s closely followed by semiconductors, graphics cards, cybersecurity, cryptocurrency, and data governance laws such as Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). If a new topic catches your eye, is especially relevant to your job, or seems like it could be useful in the future, consider creating a Google Alert to keep up with the latest news about it.

6. Build your own network of experts

Consider treating your company’s IT specialist to coffee, asking your friend group’s resident tech expert for a lesson, or requesting an information interview with an industry professional you’ve connected with on LinkedIn. Everyone will bring their own expertise and tips to the table, and the more you learn, the more formidable your industry knowledge will be. Good luck!