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30 MacDirectory DEPARTMENT AN APPLE A DAY > TECH TERMS MADE SIMPLE WORDS BY MARY ROSENTHOL Adaptive Enterprise > Or, adaptive organization. An organization in which the demand and supply of goods or services are matched and synchronized at all times. Such an organization optimizes the use of resources, using only those it needs and paying only for what it uses, yet ensuring that the supply is adequate to meet demand. In traditional businesses, large inventories may be built up, tying up capital. Conversely, lack of foresight can result in spot shortages. Adaptive enterprises strive to eliminate unproductive or redundant labor, information and materials. Cash flow is improved. Sudden crises, caused by a cutoff in the supply of a single item or resource, rarely occur. Astroturfing > The artificial creation of grassroots buzz for a product, service or political viewpoint. Astroturf marketers typically use blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, vlogs, chat rooms and social media Web sites such as MySpace when building an artificial buzz. Deceptive astroturf marketing techniques include impersonating someone in the targeted demographic, creating an entirely fictional character (called a meat puppet) that's meant to appear to others to be a real person. Astroturf marketing is sometimes called green marketing. Buzzword Bingo > A game played during meetings with cards featuring buzzwords (such as "incentivize," "outside the box," and "push the envelope") in place of the numbers of traditional bingo cards. A buzzword bingo card typically features 25 squares, five down and five across, including a free "bingo" square somewhere on the card as a bonus. Participants mark words and phrases on the card as they are spoken during a meeting; the first person to mark five terms in a row is supposed to jump up and shout "Bingo!" In more repressive environments, a participant may notify other players that they've scored through surreptitious means, such as specific gesture or a text message. A player may not speak a buzzword term in order to mark it off. However, baiting one's colleagues to elicit buzzwords from them is widely considered acceptable — and even laudable — behavior. Direct Market Reseller > A (DMR), or an e-tailer, is a company that sells directly to consumers online without physical stores. Examples are Amazon, NewEgg, and ZipZoomFly. Hoteling > Or, office hoteling. The practice of giving office space to employees on an as-needed rather than constantly reserved basis. This reduces the amount of physical space that a business needs, lowering overhead cost while ensuring that every worker accesses office resources when necessary. A hoteling system may include a reservation program that anticipates demand. Employees can retain their own telephone number extension and voice mailbox. The system is especially useful to enterprises in which employees travel frequently. The concept began in 1994 with the non-territorial office, conceived by the advertising agency Chiat/Day. K-Management > Concept in which a business consciously and comprehensively gathers, organizes, shares and analyzes knowledge in terms of resources, documents and people skills. In early 1998, it was believed that few enterprises actually had a comprehensive knowledge management practice in operation. Advances in technology and the way we access and share information changed that; many companies now have some kind of knowledge management framework in place. Lights Out Management > The ability for a system administrator to monitor and manage servers by remote control. Scrum > An agile software development model based on multiple small teams working in an intensive and interdependent manner. The term is named for the scrum (or scrummage) formation in rugby, which is used to restart the game after an event that causes play to stop, such as an infringement. Wikinomics > A term that describes the effects of extensive collaboration and user-participation on the marketplace and corporate world. Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams popularized the term in their book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, published in December 2006. The word itself is constructed from wiki (a server program that allows users to collaborate on a Web site) and economics.