“If I knew then what I know now.” It’s a common mantra – one that permeates our relationships with others and careers.

On my plane back from San Francisco yesterday I was thinking about how far I’ve come in my understanding of tech, but also what I wish I had known when I was first starting out.

One initial hurdle for me was getting a good grasp on industry jargon and terminology.

In an effort to help others avoid the blank stare at the mention of the movement to the cloud, here’s my list of the top terms anyone who’s working in PR or marketing for tech companies should know:

CTO/CIO/CSO: These stand for Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer and Chief Security Officer respectively, and all are members of the executive suite. Some companies have these positions, some don’t. Usually, the bigger a company gets (or depending what industry it is in) the more likely it is to have these positions. There is also the CISO (Chief Information Security Officer).

The cloud: A trendy (but increasingly meaningless) term that refers to the Web in terms of information processing and storage. It’s the difference between Word and Google Docs.

Silo: An information silo is when information in a system is incapable of interacting with another system. For example, if a city’s transportation system kept track of the locations and expected arrival times of all its buses but digital displays at bus stops only showed the pre-scheduled arrival time, the systems would exist in information silos. The data was not shared across the systems.

SOA: Service Oriented Architecture refers to a system architecture wherein the different components can “talk” to one another and are integrated instead of data living independently on their own. It is a solution for information silos.

Widget: Essentially, code that can be embedded anywhere across the Web. This is important in marketing, as it gives audiences the opportunity to interact with a brand and literally embed that brand (or idea, or campaign…) into their own social networks/Web sites. A great example of this is Sprout, a company out of Hawaii and San Francisco. Anyone can build a “Sprout” (i.e. their own widget) for free that can then be embedded into any Web site. Widgets are great for the marketer because they’re an innovative method to engage audiences and maximize the conversion ratio, a major metric that marketing campaigns and marketers themselves are commonly judged on.

An example below…

SaaS: If a business/product application is in the “clouds,” it can be referred to as Software as a Service. Salesforce is a great example, as is pretty much any 37Signals product. It is one component of the “cloud.”

802.11n: No, it’s not a radio station. And it’s not a computer serial number. 802.11n is the next standard of wireless speed and security that is poised to take the world by storm in the next few years. It’s not officially ratified yet, but enterprises are rapidly adopting it to increase their efficiencies, lower costs and create increasingly more mobile workforces.

B2B and B2C: Technically, these terms aren’t relegated to tech but they are important terms to know. B2B stands for Business to Business, a business that creates a product/delivers a service to other businesses. B2C is when a business delivers a product/service directly to customers.

What others terms should every PR and marketing person in tech know? Let’s here ‘em.

Update: A commenter suggested I start a list, so I’ve created a PR Tech Newbies wiki so everyone can add their own terms. Collective knowledge FTW! Add more terms and help newbies for the greater good right this minute. Thank you all for your participation!