Talking about complicated topics is hard. I remember reading somewhere that if you can’t explain what you do in simple enough terms that a grandmother can understand it then you don’t know enough about what you are doing. Unfortunately I can’t find the original quote but if you think about it, it makes sense. People who don’t understand a given topic in depth will revert to using acronyms or jargon to explain what they do. Folks who do understand will be able to explain it using small words and concepts. The best example of this is the Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words a book by Randall Munroe from the XKCD fame. In the book, things are explained in the style of Up Goer Five, using only drawings and a vocabulary of the 1,000 (or “ten hundred”) most common words. Explore computer buildings (datacenters), the flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates), the things you use to steer a plane (airliner cockpit controls), and the little bags of water you’re made of (cells). My Niece and Nephew love the book and refer to it regularly.
Julia Evans recently gave a talk on Making Hard Things Easy that everyone should listen to or read, since she also gave a transcript. Which was awesome else I would have missed out on this great talk. She talks about how to approach a problem/question/topic to make it easier to understand with examples from her own experience.
Julia is a wiz at making difficult topics seem easy. She publishes Webzines that explain computer topics in easy to understand comic format. I have bought all the ones she has published so far as PDF’s and would recommend you do the same. The site above has samples of her work so do check it out.
– Suramya