Greater than 12 minutes, my friend!
1,000 Members and 5 Biggest Challenges The Open Mic Faces
I know it’s a very long read, but if you love The Open Mic community I’d really appreciate it if you could read this article and share your opinion in the comments. Thank you so much in advance!
You know, when I launched The Open Mic a little less than 4 months ago I didn’t expect that in just 3 months we will be celebrating our first major milestone.
Yay! Thank you for making this, Kozue! That's so awesome! pic.twitter.com/0RdXfiK2yp
— Dmitry Kornyukhov (@DKornyukhov) February 12, 2016
It’s crazy how time flies and how one tiny idea can grow into something that massive.
1,086 people believed in this amazing little project.
1,086 people have taken that leap of faith and created that free account.
1,089 people are building the most inspiring and supportive translation community on the web.
Against all odds.
Despite all that negativity that you often find on social media these days.
1,089 people are building a parallel translation universe where we all work together and not against each other.
A parallel translation universe where we promote great knowledge.
A parallel translation universe where we encourage and support people who want to make this industry a little bit better.
A parallel translation universe where translators can meet like-minded people and even find clients.
A parallel translation universe where design, functionality and community feedback play a major role in the development of this platform.
I just want to say big thank you to all those 1,089 people who believe in this project and support it.
I want to say thank you to all the incredible contributors who carve out a few minutes of their time to publish amazing stories.
I want to say thank you to all the amazing people who read and share, leave comments and help us spread the word about The Open Mic.
In my humble opinion, you’re the real stars of this industry and I’m proud to be among such an amazing and supportive group of people.
Thank you for making The Open Mic possible.
5 Biggest Challenges The Open Mic Faces
Of course it goes without saying that building something like The Open Mic is a very challenging task.
We all make sacrifices, but this is absolutely essential if we want to build a better future.
Building something new is hard.
It takes a lot of time.
It takes a lot of patience.
And many sleepless nights filled with anxiety, fear and uncertainty.
Even though it seem like our growth is absolutely mind-blowing (and it is) there are still quite a few challenges that we need to overcome.
And since there’re 1,089 of us I think that you deserve to know about these challenges.
And who knows, maybe you might help us overcome them?
Technical Difficulties, Lack of Knowledge and High User Expectations
It might sound a bit surprising, but I’m not a web-developer.
2 years ago I had no idea what the heck was CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, etc.
Hell, I didn’t even know what a domain name was.
And this guy single-handedly envisioned, designed and built arguably one of the best-looking communities for translators.
I’ve learned an insane amount of information over the past few years.
It seems like everything happened so fast, but in reality there were countless hours, weeks, days and months of hard work, learning and trial and error.
And even though I do know quite a lot about web-design, user experience and best practices, I’m not a developer.
I cannot code.
I cannot develop new features that are outside of my scope.
I’m very bad at optimizing websites and making sure everything works fast.
And here comes my first biggest challenge: I realize that I’m getting very close to a giant wall.
And in order to climb that wall I need a partner.
I need someone who has the required skills to guarantee our future growth and technical advancement.
I need someone who share the same passion for this profession and for this industry.
In other words, I need a technical co-founder.
I did my best. I jumped 5 times over my head, but there’s a limit to what I can offer as a developer.
I need to find or hire someone who can help us alleviate all our technical pains and take The Open Mic to a whole new level.
I need him or her because I want The Open Mic to be a serious company.
I want to offer the best user experience in the translation industry (and people do have very high expectations when it comes to design and functionality).
I also want to innovate and create new opportunities for all 1,089 of us.
I want to create jobs. I want us to build strong partnerships with technology companies that work with direct clients.
I want The Open Mic to be a go-to place for professional translations.
And to be able to achieve this, I’ll need solid programmers, back-end engineers and front-end developers.
As you can imagine those people don’t grow on trees.
I know that I can just find a freelancer, but I want to find a partner rather than a freelancer.
Someone who can take that leap of faith with me and help us build a better future.
Any ideas where to find such a person?
Promoting The Open Mic among Seasoned Translators
To be honest, I feel like I don’t have much authority in the translation industry.
I do have somewhat decent leadership skills, but I don’t have authority.
I’m not a celebrated translator.
My translations never won any awards.
I haven’t worked with presidents, EU or high-profile end clients.
I don’t belong to professional associations, I don’t participate in industry events and I don’t present at conferences.
I didn’t publish any books, I don’t get involved in CPD.
I don’t teach at universities and I don’t sell courses and webinars.
I might be a good blogger and a great leader of my community, but I don’t think I have any influence in the industry.
That’s why promoting The Open Mic among so-called seasoned or experienced translators is quite a challenge for me.
Right now our community mostly consists of young people, there’s also a high percentage of people who don’t have much experience under their belts.
Of course, we do have some seasoned translators here. Some of them have been very active contributors and Open Mic ambassadors (helping me promote Open Mic on social media and in professional associations).
But I wish we could attract even more professional translators.
There are many things why professional translators are being cautions about joining The Open Mic.
Here are just some of the examples that I’ve encountered:
- They’re simply too busy.
Not so many people can dedicate their time to communities. Professional translators are simply too busy working and finding clients or investing in their own CPD. - They don’t see anything for them in here.
When you join a community you want something in return, right? You want new opportunities for networking or making money, you want some value or something that can solve your problems. Many professional translators don’t see any value in joining The Open Mic. The only different thing about The Open Mic is great design and blogging functionality. Most professional translators choose to stick to their own blogs while Facebook, LinkedIn and professional associations meet all their networking needs. And since there’s no immediate way to make money on The Open Mic as opposed to Proz, for example (all hail job-bidding) or through personal website, they probably think that The Open Mic profile doesn’t add much in terms of value. - They don’t believe that The Open Mic has the interests of translators at heart.
In the era where there’s a big feud between agencies and translators to the point that some people even demand to split ATA in half a lot of professional translators simply don’t believe that some young translator like myself who don’t have much of a reputation or authority in the professional community has their best interests at heart.
You know, I don’t really blame them for being skeptical I mostly blame associations and other professional communities that allowed this to happen. This is probably the most challenging part. It’s hard to change people’s mind about something. If they don’t trust you from the start there’s not much you can do to persuade them. That’s why I’ll be trying to win people over with my actions rather than words. I think it’s more effective this way although it’s very time-consuming and exhausting.
Funding, Finding Money and Monetization Strategies
As you probably know The Open Mic is a free platform and you don’t have to pay any membership fees to use our features.
But of course running and maintaining The Open Mic costs money and when something is free it only means that it’s free for a group of people while someone has to pay.
That someone is me, of course, as I’m covering all the maintenance and development costs myself (right now it’s something around 200 USD per month) 🙂
Even though I really enjoy what I’m doing here and I don’t have any problems making that sacrifice and investing my money into what I believe is a great idea, sometimes it’s not easy.
For example, we didn’t go on vacation with my wife last year simply because I invest all of my money into The Open Mic.
My business also suffers from this because I spend so much time building The Open Mic that I simply don’t have much time to develop my own translation business.
As a result my sales went downhill last year from 50k a year to 35k (before tax and business expenses).
All of that puts a lot of pressure on me as a founder and on my family.
That’s why I’m constantly thinking about money and monetization strategies.
I know that I don’t want membership fees.
I know that I don’t want ads.
But how on Earth would I make The Open Mic profitable then?
As I explained in this post I want to try and make The Open Mic a community-driven project.
But at the same time I need to be realistic.
Sure, if I launch a donation campaign we might raise a few thousands of dollars.
But would it be enough to expand our team and hire people?
More importantly: would you be interested in becoming our life-long supporter?
I’d really like to know your thoughts about it.
Do you see any value in The Open Mic and when the time comes would you support us?
Another problem that money bring is accountability.
If you invest a few bucks to support a cause you expect to see the results.
That’s why I’m not launching the donation campaign because I need to think long and hard about accountability and transparency.
I need to figure out how to make the whole process transparent and make sure that every dollar you donate will be spent wisely.
As a matter of fact I’d love to involve community into the decision-making process somehow.
After all, we’re building The Open Mic together.
As you can see from our Trello board we have plenty of great ideas (both my ideas and the ideas of the community).
But some of them would require serious financial investment (e.g.: building an app for The Open Mic can easily cost us tens of thousands of dollars).
Would community be willing to support us in the long run and on a recurring basis?
I don’t know.
But I do know that I definitely need other monetization strategies that could work both for The Open Mic and for the community.
Any suggestions are always welcome, by the way 🙂
Meanwhile I’ll keep making those financial sacrifices because I believe in this idea with all my heart.
Plus, I’m a lucky bastard because I’ve married the most supportive woman in the history of the universe.
You can’t imagine how encouraging it is to have someone by your side who not only supports you, but also understands how important everything I do for me and for my community.
That’s why all those sacrifices (like not going on vacation or me making less money) come so easy for our family.
Sometimes I think she’s the only reason that I manage to do the things I do here.
The Open Mic wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for the support and the encouragement of my wife, my family and my friends.
I’m truly blessed to have them in my life.
Conservative Community and No Room for Disruption
If you’d spent as much time on different forums and in comment sections of different blogs as I did, you’d realize that we do love arguing with each other.
And we certainly love criticizing other people’s work.
I guess, there’s not much I can do about it, after all it’s only human nature.
But I’ve noticed something very interesting.
Again, this is just my personal observation and maybe I’m being paranoid, but it almost seems like the first reaction to anything new in the translation community is rejection and suspicion.
Just ask Kevin and Nate how much fun they’re having defending TM Town on Proz.com forums (Spoiler Alert: it’s not fun at all because some people can be very brutal and inconsiderate in their opinions).
When you have a new idea or technology it’s very hard to convince people that you have their best interest in mind.
And it’s particularly hard in the translation community.
Our community is not very open to new ideas.
We’re always suspicious. We’re always trying to find flaws instead of focusing on benefits.
Once again, this is just my personal opinion.
Since not many of us are ready to make sacrifices or roll up our sleeves and build something awesome and change the industry, many of us see those of us who actually DO try to build something awesome as scammers or opportunists.
As a result it’s really hard to be a disruptor in the community that doesn’t like to be disrupted.
Every new trend, every new idea receives a fair share of negativity.
Even The Open Mic 🙂
I still remember a few particularly hurtful comments I received during the early days when I just launched The Open Mic.
I remembered them because they were coming from someone who in my opinion had a lot of authority and influence in the industry.
And when industry veterans who arguably seen it all cannot see or don’t want to understand what you’re trying to do it really hurts.
It really affects your productivity and puts an idea in your head that maybe that thing you’re building is absolutely pointless.
I know, I know, haters gonna hate, potatoes gonna potate.
I’m a tough cookie and criticism never really stopped me.
But still, imagine how many people in our industry are giving up their ideas simply because we don’t support them?
That’s fucked up.
And I see this happening over and over again.
I even think I criticized new ideas too at some point of my professional life.
Don’t you think that this kind of attitude is what really hurts our profession the most and not those bad translation agencies or machine translation that everyone seem to be so worried about?
Don’t you think that translators can be their own enemies?
Lack of Time, No Team and Tunnel Vision
The Open Mic is a team of 1.
Yep, you’ve read that correctly.
Everything from web-development to marketing lies on the shoulders of one guy (yep, you guessed that correctly – I’m that guy) 🙂
And since The Open Mic doesn’t generate any profit yet it’s really hard for me to find a balance between my translation business and building, developing, growing and promoting The Open Mic (oh and let’s not forget the customer support that The Open Mic now offers – that one is on me too).
Juggling between all those responsibilities is not an easy task.
I spend most of my time buried in emails and private messages from colleagues, clients and developers who occasionally help me with The Open Mic.
And when I’m not buried in emails is invest 100% of my time into engaging the community, listening to their needs and developing new features that meet the needs of the community.
Let’s not forget that I also need to focus on growth, because frankly speaking I’m the major driving force with Simon being the 2nd best with this awesome article he wrote about our community.
Some of you might wonder, why I’m not bringing more people to my team.
The reason is simple: I don’t know what The Open Mic can offer in return.
Equity?
Well, maybe.
But since our monetization strategies haven’t been really developed offering equity is like offering air.
Money?
I wish I could hire people, but given my current financial situation I can barely cover the ongoing costs such as hosting, so adding a full-time employee is not an option.
Nothing at all?
Well, that’s definitely a possibility. I know we have plenty of enthusiastic members in here who’d be happy to donate their time.
But that’s not how I roll, sorry. I don’t want to use people without offering nothing in return.
That’s why I’m a bit stuck in the situation where I have too many responsibilities and too little time to really “nail it” in all departments.
On top of that, let’s not forget that having 1 person in the team can create a tunnel vision syndrome, where this person gets fixated on certain things and cannot see things clearly.
Of course, I listen to the community, but most of the time I’m the one who has to take executive decisions and sometimes not all my decisions are the best or the smartest.
Wrapping Up
As you can see there are many challenges ahead of us.
But hey, nobody told me it’s going to be easy, so I’m totally cool with it.
I hope that you enjoyed reading it and that now you know absolutely everything about The Open Mic and what we’re going through.
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment box.
And of course any suggestions and ideas are always welcome.
Thank you so much for reading this long opus 🙂
The Open Mic Team 
First of all, thanks Dmitry for the huge effort you put in building The Open Mic. From what I’ve seen since I registered here, probably the main issue is a lack of focus. In my humble opinion, you’re trying to accomplish to many things. The “About” page reads: “Join the most inspiring community and start talking about the things that matter! Teach and learn, share your stories and inspire. Find translators for your next project.” So The Open Mic would like to be: a) a community; b) a training platform; c) a blog (or at least a place with stories); d) a marketplace. That’s definitely too much. I know that b), c) and d) are probably by-products of (a). However, building a community per se is quite hard, especially in an industry that already has dozens of them, starting from ProZ and going to the ones related to global and local associations, groups on Facebook, and so on. Do I have any solutions? Well, no. If I were you, I’d brainstorm a little bit, trying to find what’s the real value of The Open Mic compared to other similar pages. Right now I see it more as a collective blog, giving free exposure to translators, even when the articles are not really of high quality. My only suggestion, or better said, what I’d like to see, would be a curated page, sort of a high-quality magazine, where each and every published article really matters, or put some mechanism like reddit, so that more relevant articles stay on top. Just my 2 cents. Again, congratulations for what you have achieved so far!
Thank you, Marco! I agree that building a community is not an easy job and there’re a lot of moving pieces here. And you’re right: all those b, c, d, e, f, etc. are a by-product of a – A community which our my main goal here.
I want to build a digital home for all translators out there. A place where you feel welcomed. Where you belong. A place where you can do all sorts of cool things.
In other words I want to build a next-generation community for translators because I feel like neither Proz nor Facebook groups and associations fully meet the needs of the translators. On top of that none of them are accessible to direct clients. None of them can offer great design and functionality. And many of them are influenced by third parties (just ask some ATA members what they think about agencies being members of ATA).
I think translators deserve a community like this. It’s about time we’ve built something modern and original. I find it heart-breaking that job-bidding platforms with outdated design are still the most popular communities for translators.
Designers have Dribbble.
Programmers have GitHub.
Photographers have Flickr.
All those websites have something in common: they serve the community and help the people of those profession to network and showcase their skills. They also have amazing design and robust functionality.
And what do translators have? Proz? Facebook groups? Forums of associations that are not visible to non-members?
I think you know where I’m going with this one.
Our profession have so many pains (scammers, unprofessionalism, low rates, etc.) because we don’t have a strong community that would unite us all and empower us.
Of course, this is just my opinion 🙂
P.S.: Agree about filtering content in a smarter way, but right now it’s not possible without hiring some extra help. But I DO want to improve it, so we’re on the same page, I just don’t know yet how we’re going to implement it. I was thinking a lot about it and it seems that hiring a developer is the best solution. Let’s wait and see what next month will bring me (work-wise) maybe I’ll have a couple hundred bucks to spend 🙂
Thank you so much for all your emails and this comment! It really helps a lot!
Although form or design are important, function always comes first. The 3 sites you mentioned are full of useful features and actually, the community came later, attracted by their main feature (free portfolio for Dribbble, GIT server for Github and free storage for Flickr). What I tried to express above is that you can’t start by saying “let’s build a community” and hope people to jump on board simply because your WordPress theme is so much better-looking than the 90’s design of ProZ. 🙂 ProZ (and I’m not defending them, like you can also see on my site, link to qabiria.com –sorry, Italian only) does have tons of features well worth being there. So, the key here is to offer some disruptive new feature to our fellow translators and gain momentum from that, or convert The Open Mic into, say, the Medium for translators (but then, what makes this better than a specific publication on Medium.com)?
BTW, there’s another consideration: sometimes I wonder if the main reason for this lack of a proper community lies in the very nature of our profession, due to historical and practical reasons (need to be alone to focus, people working mostly from home, scarce interaction with customers and colleagues, etc.) 🙂
Interesting point of view, Marco! Agree that offering disruptive features is probably the best way to go. Blogging is probably one of the strongest features of The Open Mic and that’s one that people use most often.
Of course, The Open Mic is still too young and it will take years before we can compete with other communities in terms of functionality, but you know me and how hard I work to make The Open Mic even better and different.
I think The Open Mic is already slowly becoming a Medium.com for translators. I see stories being published almost every day which is absolutely mind-blowing and I’m grateful to all the great authors who dedicate their time and help us build this unique collective blog.
That’s why I’ll be trying to focus more on making publishing experience even more enjoyable since this is clearly one of the strengths of The Open Mic.
I wonder what kind of functionality of Proz do you find most useful to you? Do you think we could learn something from them? Perhaps you’d like to see any similar features on The Open Mic?
I forgot to answer you about the features of ProZ I find useful (maybe not for my particular situation, but I know for sure that many fellow translators find them useful): the BlueBoard, the Term Search, the Kudoz questions, the invoicing tool, the forums (particularly the ones related to cat tools), the article knowledge base, the software comparison tool, all the online training courses, the TGB (discounts for group buy). To me, the most useful is (was) the Blue Board. And of course, the Open Mic can learn a great deal from them, learning from their mistakes, but also from their success. I’m not particularly keen on duplicating ProZ’s features on the Open Mic. This is something that you need to think about by yourself, if any feature is aligned with your vision of the Open Mic.
Hey Marco! Thank you so much for getting back to me on this one! Surely Proz have plenty of great features and in terms of depth and functionality The Open Mic is not even close.
I think there’s absolutely no point in trying to compete with Proz. We have to choose our own path. I personally love the knowledge-sharing aspect of our community. I’m absolutely thrilled when I wake up every morning and find new stories on The Open Mic. As a matter of fact, that’s my new morning routine now – I read new Open Mic stories before I even open my computer 🙂
So yeah, we need to expand that somehow, make it more accessible and easy to navigate (maybe add some filtering like you suggest to make it easy to find the best content).
On the other hand, though, as our community grows stronger and stronger we need to think where we want to go next. Because there are a lot of cool things we could do together.
Building a new form of marketplace seems like the most obvious choice because that’s the one that could be easily monetized.
I know I’m probably not the first one to try this, but hey, you only live once, right? 😀
One thing I know for sure: we need to figure out how to move past job-bidding. It was great 10 years ago and maybe some of us find our first clients that way (I certainly did), but in the long-run I think it’s hurting our profession and from what I could gather online freelancers of other professions have the same feelings.
We need to create new opportunities, but it can only happen if we all work together as a team.
Dmitry, thank you for idea of TheOpenMic and your truly colossal efforts.
As for me it is one-to-go point for many interesting thoughts and ideas, more comfortable to use comparing to, say, Feedly or Facebook groups.
As for technical co-founder for the project – I’m not sure I can take part, but please tell me what that person should do with the project (please message to link to facebook.com ) – may be I could help with some tasks or recommend someone.
As for monetization – I don’t believe ads are so bad idea – you can add one or two blocks and then look at the results and ask community do we mind or not.
One more idea – it is possible to run promotion campaign at Google or Facebook or somewhere else for direct clients and then every OpenMic-er, who got a project thanks to profile on the OpenMic and that campaign, will give 5-10% of the amount earned for the development of the OpenMic. All users here are honest and I believe most of them will not cheat in this case.
As for your translation business – if you don’t have time to translate, you can forward projects to me 🙂 and other translators at lower rates.
Thank you so much for stopping by, Alexey! Haven’t seen you here for a while 😉
Love your ideas and suggestions and I’m so happy to hear that you find all the stories here interesting!
A technical co-founder would have to work on custom WP development: modifying theme, fixing bugs, troubleshooting plugin compatibility issues, building custom plugins and extending the functionality of existing plugins, optimizing site performance, improving server performance trying to reduce the server load to minimum.
This is just a few things. I also realize that we need to improve UI and UX A LOT. Building custom landing pages for end-clients, agencies, project managers, etc. In other words – there’s a lot of work and I need someone who has a proven track record in WP world. I have a couple candidates, but I’m waiting till I can offer them something in return.
Even though I work for free here, it doesn’t mean that other people have to work for free too. I think that donation campaign can be a great start to secure initial funding and attract talented developers.
Not sure about ads, yet. Mostly because I haven’t been contacted by anyone who’d like to place their ads. Once The Open Mic gains a lot of momentum, I’m sure there will be lots of offers and we’ll see how it goes. But right now The Open Mic is ads free and I hope we’ll manage to keep it that way.
Interesting idea about promotion for direct clients. From what i understand you mean something like targeted ads? This can be done BUT right now The Open Mic is not quite ready for clients.
I’m planning to start with agencies and project managers first in the upcoming agencies. I will collect their feedback first to make sure we’re on the same page, but from what I’ve seen so far there’s a lot of excitement among translation agencies. Some of them reached to me asking me how they can register on The Open Mic. We even had a few PMs of agencies registering on The Open Mic as translators.
Some of them even told me that they got in touch with several translators from TOM. By the way, when I have potential clients but I cannot take their work, I send them to TOM 🙂
Which brings me to this idea: we need to create a simple platform where clients could interact with translators in an easy way. Maybe we can even build some sort of Airbnb for translation services where people who need translation could find AND instantly hire people who offer translation services just like on Airbnb people who need houses can find people who have houses.
In that case TOM would take a service fee. But as you can imagine building something like this requires an insane amount of attention to detail. From legal issues to handling money and conflict resolution – all of that is a lot of work. But that’s something that doesn’t scare me. It really excites me and I’d love to build something like this. What do you think?
Of course this have to be completely separate from the blogging feature of The Open Mic.
Dmitry, what do I think:
Technical co-founder – it is all not about me but I can suggest a paid, good and proven programmer after we’ll find the ways of monetizing.
“Not sure about ads, yet. Mostly because I haven’t been contacted by anyone who’d like to place their ads.”
You can use standard Google adblocks and Google itself will provide ads relevant to each visitor. You’ll get several cents for every click on ad.
“we need to create a simple platform where clients could interact with translators in an easy way” – I didn’t understand clearly – what is the difference of this idea from, say, ProZ or Upwork?
Donation campaign – I think you can start it right now. You can make a “thank you page” with the names of all contributors, design cool certificate “TOM Contributor” with the name of contributor, short description of TOM and link to TOM, which can be putted into Linkedin/Proz etc. profiles (thus adding visitors to TOM from those profiles) and maybe give some preferences for contributors at a later stage, e.g. than there will be some paid functions.
Hey Alexey! Pay-per-click ads is probably not the best way to generate any meaningful profit. I’d rather work directly with companies like MemoQ, Trados, etc. to see if they’re interested in advertising on The Open Mic or creating exclusive discounts for our community, etc. But in order to get there our community needs to grow substantially.
“What is the difference of this idea from, say, ProZ or Upwork?” The difference is that The Open Mic is not a job-bidding platform. So instead of creating a project and waiting for bids, we need to help our clients to find perfect translators based on their needs.
Our directory already offers many great and flexible parameters for finding freelancers. I know that some agencies already use it 🙂
On top of that, Review will affect directory ranking and Verified Accounts will help foster trust.
Job-bidding platforms like Proz and Upwork are great for those clients who’re in a rush and don’t care much about doing a little bit of research and connecting with translators.
I want to build a platform that will facilitate the exchange between the consumers and service providers.
Think Airbnb or Uber as an example of what we’re trying to achieve here.
Instead of clashing hundreds of freelancers into a price war where everyone looses (including the client) we want to offer an easy way to connect with freelancer who meet the client’s criteria (experience, language pair, offered services, price, positive reviews).
I think that this is something that can actually work given how many horror stories there are about Proz or Upwork and many other blind auction websites.
On top of that a platform like this can really help us promote transparency and help our clients get a better understanding of our profession and how to find a perfect translator.
Frankly, I’ll stay away from the marketplace idea. On top of that, I would be very careful when mentioning “the Airbnb or Uber for the translation industry”. Uber is killing the taxi business onboarding unspecialized drivers and letting everyone drive people around, as long as they have an app and a smartphone. Airbnb is doing the same to the registered B&B and hotels. So, practically, saying “I want to be the next Uber” means that you want to welcome unprofessionals and deregulate a market. Except that in our case, the translation market is already deregulated (everyone can be a translator right now)… probably this is not what you really want… 😀
Good points, Marco! But when I say Uber or Airbnb I mostly mean great functionality, ease of use and fantastic user experience.
Oh, and I believe both companies invest a lot into making sure that listings are accurate and the drivers are qualified.
I know that Airbnb verifies the identity of property owners and I believe they do site inspections.
Point is: there are no websites or apps where translation buyers could connect with translation service providers in an easy way.
I think this is partially our fault because we tend to make things super complicated for our clients with all those word counts (most direct clients don’t understand that UoM), CAT tools, fuzzy matches, our complicated pricing strategies where price can be different every time based on various factors, etc.
You made a very good point about deregulated market and non-professionals working as translators.
I think this is happening because there are dozens of websites that make it super easy for translation buyers to leverage the power of the non-professional translators. Some of them have a very intuitive design and even offer API making it possible to integrate them into 3rd party apps and websites.
I think that for professionals like us the most rational step would be to create something similar but target at those companies who look for quality and where brand image is at stake.
This would allow us to have more control of the market, promote the image of professional translators and emphasize the importance of quality, while creating simple instruments for our clients and streamlining our collaboration.
But I’m probably getting ahead of myself because what I’m describing is still probably an utopia in the eyes of many professional translators, but for me it all makes perfect sense.
That’s why I’ll keep pushing forward making sure that we build a better future for all of us because we definitely deserve it 🙂
Here’s a great article about freelancing websites: link to launchastartup.com
Those sites serve a purpose, just like the translation marketplaces. Connecting demand and offer. Competition is hard, so prices go lower and lower and professionalism sometimes is lacking. So what? That’s true for every market: if I need to refurbish my kitchen, I can call the next-door friend who is unemployed and hope for the best, or hire a higher-end specialised company. So, really, blaming marketplaces and the like is really wasted time. If you don’t want to be there, nobody forces you to be there, both as a buyer and as a seller. The fact that they generate lots of money, still proves that someone finds those sites useful.
I think maybe the problem is that marketplaces don’t care much about customer experience? I don’t know I’m just throwing ideas out there.
You can have the best intentions and you can end up hiring a shitty service provider simply because the marketplace didn’t really do hand-helding.
You just publish your project and then you get dozens of bids and you’re completely lost because you have no idea which one is good and which one is bad and more importantly what defines a good service provider in the first place.
So most of the time you’re hoping that you’ll get lucky somehow, which is super hard when you don’t understand what you need or how to find a great expert (which is often the case with the first-time translation buyers).
I think the future of marketplaces should shift from job-biding towards a smarter matching of client’s needs with the skills of available freelancers. It could be done through smarter automation or even though the intervention of customer support reps who could guide poor clients through the whole process, helping them avoid common pitfalls: cheap low quality labor, unqualified freelancers, etc.
But that kinda turns a marketplace into something entirely different?
The fact that the existing marketplaces generate enough money simply means that there’re no better alternatives.
But every once in a while there will be someone in a garage creating something innovative that changes the entire industry once again. Will The Open Mic become that innovator in the realm of marketplaces for translators? I don’t know. But I know that I want to give it my best shot because actions are better than anything in this world.
Actions are better than words, comments, criticism, anger. Actions are the only thing that moves this world forward.
By the way you can always send me a message here, on The Open Mic if you want to discuss this further or would like to share some suggestions and ideas privately. Why use Facebook, when we now have a fully-functional social network for translators 😉
Hey Dmitry,
You have done – and are doing – an excellent job with TheOpenMic!
I agree with both Marco and Alexey: Let’s build a solid base first, the community will come by itself.
As for monetizing, how about keeping the Blog/Community part free and charging only for the Marketplace features? Thus, money wouldn’t get into the way of exchange.
And perhaps you should do the donation campaign – that would give you (and us) time to get TheOpenMic really going.
Which brings me to the important question(s):
How can I help? How can we help?
Hey Patric! Thank you so much for sharing your ideas! This means the world to me! I absolutely agree that blogging and community should be absolutely free for everyone. I was also thinking the other day about building a dedicated forum for Open Mic members. What do you think? Do we need one? I kinda feel like we do, because there is no way right now to really gather together as a community to discuss important topics.
Agree about marketplace that it should be totally separate from blogging. Right now The Open Mic already have some early marketplace features, like a directory of translators: link to theopenmic.co or Reviews and Verified Accounts which come in handy once we start attracting clients. Of course marketplace is far from ideal and there are a lot of things we can do with it (see my reply to Alexey above about Airbnb for translation services).
I think for marketplace to really work the way I envisioned we need to build a strong and super engaged community first.
You can help by spreading the word about The Open Mic in any way you can: on conferences, in private Facebook and LinkedIn groups, etc.
Donation campaign is something I want to do later on. Even though it seems like an easy way to raise money, but it actually requires a lot of planning and careful execution.
Thank you. Dmitry. I consider myself a “seasoned” translator according to your definition, though I believed in this project from the beginning, even if i do not have time and read your blogs on Sunday afternoons 🙂 Blogging is a very interesting feature for me. At the beginning I read almost everty article, but now they are too many with less “innovative” ideas. Marco’s idea is to curate articles would be a great idea (without compromising transparency of this project which is a real plus! ) Another point is Comments. It may seem bad to say, but I would encourage the discussion and discourage the “thank you comment” without added value. I do not know how to promote discussion effectvievly, but I think that a community can increase if we discuss… Maybe you can launch a topic of the month and people contribute with their ideas. What I like of the OpenMic is the possibility to learn from other’s experience. I am not looking for clients, nor for jobs, I am looking for food for thought.,ideas. I want to share experience and information. Maybe you can do a crowdfounding campaign aiming at the publication of an ebook from curated articles of the community? It is just brainstorming… 🙂 Go ahead and do not loose the spirit of transparency and passion. Francesca
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and ideas, Francesca! And thank you for being such an amazing contributor. I agree that we need better ways to have interesting discussions. What do you think about building a forum for Open Mic members? Do you think it’s a good idea?
Because right now the only place to have discussions is in comments to individual articles and that’s not very engaging or effective. I think a forum could be a good place for all of us to gather together and throw our ideas out there. What do you think?
I love the idea about an e-book. I think this could be a lot of fun, but I’m a bit worried that if we don’t include someone into the book that could break people’s hearts. I mean, how would we decide what post should be included into the book and what not?
By the way, we actually already have this idea on our Trello board: link to trello.com < So, great minds think alike 😉 Thank you for all your encouragement and for everything you do for The Open Mic! The thing about me: I think I found an endless source of passion inside of my heart thanks to The Open Mic. This project really helps me feel fulfilled, like I have a purpose. I think this is my ikigai. That's why I will keep crushing it and nothing will ever stop me 🙂 By the way, I'd love to hear your feedback how I can make blogging experience better? You've contributed with so many stories you probably have some ideas?
The forum seems a good idea to test. Its success will mostly depend on the time we translators are willing to allocate for this. From my experience, you need both moderators and motivators in forum activities.
I did not open Trello before, thank you. I tried to vote ideas but I cannot find how…I will study asap!!
As for the blogging experience, I find it pretty similar to my wordpress blog, only minor technical issues the first times. I will let you know if I encouter problems or write new ideas in Trello!
Hey Francesca! I agree about the forum: if someone could allocate their time to create new topics and keep conversation going, I think a forum could be a good idea.
Right now I can barely keep up with the posts, haha, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep up with forum moderation. This is definitely something that would require a lot of effort from all members of the community.
To vote for ideas all you have to do is create a free account on Trello and then click on individual cards that you like. Once you opened a card you should see a Vote option on the right hand side 🙂
Dmitry, keep doing what you are doing.
You are absolutely right about the ‘conservative ‘ side of our profession. There’s a very unfortunate cynical sub-culture of our profession that is hostile to any new ideas, especially from anyone who hasn’t yet reached middle age. Any deviating opinion seems to be treated as a personal attack and any sort of reasonable debate of ideas is out of the question. The principle of assuming good faith is almost unheard of, as it seems preferable to jump to wild conclusions about the other party’s position and feed off misinformation. Anyone who propagates any sort of constructive, proactive approach that does us as translation professionals or the profession itself any good is labelled pejoratively as a ‘positive thinker’ or someone who walks with unicorns through fields of rainbows. Criticism and disruptive thinking, in theory, is excellent for our profession. Sadly, we seem to be unable to go about this without attacking the other’s character or misrepresenting their intentions.
But this clique represents a very small minority that contributes little to nothing to the profession and is becoming less relevant by the day. The wider profession does value new ideas such as The Open Mic, but they are the silent majority. I hope this platform grows exponentially and gives a voice to anyone who has a constructive idea or any experience to share.
In a few years’ time, when The Open Mic is a household name, you’ll look back on this milestone and wonder what you were ever worried about.
Thank you so much, Lloyd! And welcome to The Open Mic 🙂
I’m glad to hear that we’re on the same page about some of the issues I discuss in this topic. This is something that have been weighing on my mind for a long time and it feels great to finally get those thoughts out of the system.
I can definitely relate to everything you say about the “cynical sub-culture” and “personal attacks”. This is something that worries me a lot because it affects my productivity, it affects my work and sometimes blurs my vision and makes me question my abilities and my purpose.
In my humble opinion this is one of the biggest threats to our profession and to our industry in general. That way of thinking can definitely get in a way of progress or change.
One of the ideas of The Open Mic was to give us all a medium where we can discuss problems like this in a new and professional manner. Blogging is a powerful tool not only in terms of exposure and self-promotion, but also in terms of sharing and promoting great ideas.
I’m really proud with everything we’ve achieved so far and it will only get better and better, once the silent majority becomes more active. And it already has! Just take a look at the most popular and interesting topics on The Open Mic – the majority of them come from people who’re no pro-bloggers 🙂
The important thing is: we all have value. Each and every single one of us. We all can contribute to further advancement of our profession. I’m doing it by creating platforms like The Open Mic or Blabbing Translators. Other people can do this in their own way: conferences, presentations, blogs, books, courses, local communities, etc.
One thing I know for sure: we need to be more vocal and daring in expressing our opinions and points of view. That’s why I’ll keep working hard on bringing my ideas to life and helping and empowering my community.
I’m certain that The Open Mic has a very bright future. We already had an incredible impact both on the industry and the lives of individual translators and I’m 100% sure that in a few years time this will be a go to place both for new ideas and knowledge and for finding professional freelance translators.
Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your ideas. This really means a lot!
First of all, congratulations, Dmitry for the Open Mic, which I think is an excellent initiative, although if it’s costing you as much as you say it is I really wonder if you’re wise to carry on. One thing is devotion to the industry, but you must consider your financial well-being too. Having said that, I can’t let Lloyd’s veiled insult to myself and other colleagues who have recently disagreed with him over the supposed issue of online translator behaviour go by without a reply. Dismissing us as an “old guard” or a irrelevant clique just because we have different views is an unworthy ploy. I’m 53 but I’m not a conservative with either a big or small c. I believe in change for the better, but not change for change’s sake. Many other people who agree with me on the translators’ behaviour issue are much nearer to Lloyd’s age than mine. And it beggars belief anyway that on that issue Lloyd can portray what he is trying to do as anything other than a conservative reaction: something you’d expect from an older person rather than a younger one. So please don’t fall for the misrepresentation: age is not the issue here.
Hi Simon!
Thank you so much for stopping by and for your support. You can’t imagine how much it means to me!
Unfortunately I don’t have much time to catch up with all the conversations and disagreements that are happening online and offline.
One thing I’ve learned in the past few years: all modern social media tools can’t seem to get the idea of human interaction right. If I had a dollar for every time someone misinterpreted other person’s comment on the Internet I would be a billionaire 🙂
To make things worse there’s a tendency (again this is just my personal observation) where we tend to jump to conclusions too quickly often using our perceptions of other people’s age, life experiences, sex, etc. that have nothing to do with an issue at hand. Then we spice things up with our own personal comments and speculations as to what the opponent was trying to say. Which in turn starts a flame war instead of a meaningful conversation.
Social media is hard. Writing comments is hard. We all come from different cultures, sometimes different worlds, really. Our English language proficiency can also cause different issues and misinterpretations.
About age: I definitely think that age difference doesn’t really affect anything much, at least in modern Western societies. Here at The Open Mic, we have plenty of supporters from all ages and all cultural backgrounds which is truly inspiring for me as a developer. People here are absolutely fantastic! 🙂
Having said that the issue of age difference can often be derived from personal life experiences or even from the culture (for example, in Russian culture age difference is a real problem. Just look at our recent history (past century), we’re basically rebuilding our country from scratch 3rd time in a row). So when someone brings up an issue of age I think that is simply a cultural/personal thing rather than some sort of a real trend.
Having said that, I do talk a lot with young people of my age and many of them can share at least one or two stories when they were either laughed at or brutally criticized by more experienced colleagues. Which can cause a lot of trouble when someone is just in the beginning of their journey and only making their first steps.
I also have a feeling that young people don’t receive enough encouragement from senior translators (or maybe I’m projecting my personal life experiences here, haha). 🙂
However, in my humble opinion we could really step up our game in the leadership and inspiration department 🙂 That would make our beautiful profession and amazing industry so much better, don’t you agree?
I’ve asked Lloyd in private to remove these comments, and he’s declined, so I have no option but to reply in public. One reason that he gave for declining was that he was attacking “an attitude and not individuals” – with this I have to disagree. The “clique” to which he refers is easily identifiable as those people who have dared criticise the more worrying aspects of the way Standing Out® is run. As for the unicorns, it was only a few days ago that Lloyd left a comment on my recent blog post “That we might stroll where unicorns graze”…
As usual, I agree with a lot of what Lloyd has to say. We part company when he seems to imply that criticism and disruptive thinking ought to be good for our profession. Not all criticism and disruptive thinking will be good – let’s remember that we usually talk of “constructive criticism” – and not every new idea will be a good one.
But where Lloyd becomes frankly offensive is when he dares suggest, ex cathedra from his seat on the committee of ITI Cymru, that the people he is criticising contribute “little or nothing to the profession”. Many of us, those whom Lloyd dismisses as an irrelevant clique, spend tens of hours every week helping our younger (and not so younger) colleagues completely free of charge. And yet we are supposed to be lectured on professional contribution by someone who chose to criticise his colleagues’ behaviour in private Facebook groups in front of a conference of agency representatives, while sharing a platform with someone whose only contribution to the profession has been to promote his own commercial interests.
I make no excuse for calling out the charlatans that prey on our profession – be they rapacious agencies, incompetent wannabes or others – and also the hypocrites who support them. I shall continue to do so, whether it displeases Lloyd or not.
Hey Nigel! I think both opinions matter, and I’ve just read Simon’s blog post about the issue at hand.
I think the best solution right now would be to focus on what was written in my blog post here because we’re getting off-topic 🙂
I’d appreciate it if you could talk things through privately via PMs or even in person, as this is the best way of communication.
As for my post above: I’d love to hear your take on the problems that I’ve described and how we can overcome them together as a community.
Oh, I also would love to hear your opinion on how I can make The Open Mic awesome for you personally and for your colleagues.
Apologies, Simon. That actually was not a veiled threat to you or any other individuals. I was referring to an instance a few weeks ago where I observed a translator being told her ideas were unworthy because of her youth. Naturally, I am not saying that all or even a majority of translators above a certain age take this view, but it is nonetheless a problem. In any case, I (like you) prefer to criticise ideas, not individuals, as I have done above.
Different views are fantastic. I am worried about the way in which we express them. I clearly have to work on expressing mine more clearly!
OK, thanks for the clarification, Lloyd. Apologies accepted.
Just like I said in my reply to Simon above, social media is super hard. Maybe that’s because we need more real-life conversations instead of trying to fit all our thoughts into written words?
I feel like talking to people in real life is way more efficient than comments, forums, etc. That’s why Blabbing Translators is such an interesting idea because it might eliminate the traction and limitations of modern day social media and create a medium for clearer communication 🙂
Anyway, I think we’re slightly getting off topic here 🙂
Thank you for your opinions Lloyd and Simon. They both matter.
Absolutely agree that real-life interaction with colleagues is essential for a professional translator, to avoid cabin fever and to remember that we are all flesh-and-blood human beings and not just disembodied mug shots and avatars!
It makes sense, right? If I had to choose between forums/comments/facebook and a pint of Guiness at a pub, I’d choose the latter one any time of the day!
Guiness makes communication so much smoother IMHO! 😉
Just a quick thought that has been “bugging” me since I read this (Sorry, no time right now to elaborate!) 🙂
So,
Is the OM primarily a blogging web space for translators etc. involved in the industry?
OR
Is the OM primarily an online community for translators etc. involved in the industry?
If it is the first, then I think it’s doing OK! Needs some more ‘spread-the-word’ action, but it has achieved its purpose.
If the latter is the case, then I think it needs development, where the main goal would be to improve:
– the options for interaction, inter-& intra-communication; Don’t we all love to communicate?!
– develop a more user-friendly interface and easier-to-use structure
Finally, concerning financial matters, I think one of the solutions would be to open up for commercials.
The developers of translation industry related tools, writers and publishers of translation industry related materials, etc. have already steady presence on the most popular translation industry related websites. Wouldn’t they be interested in advertising on rising-star websites, too? Especially if offered some attractive advertising options and prices? 😉 🙂
I also think it’s too early to introduce OM paid services/options.
Hope to be able to share a bit more soon, and meanwhile,
HAVE A GREAT DAY!! 🙂
Hey Rossitsa!
At this current stage The Open Mic is primarily a blogging platform which is also a community. The more our community grows the more powerful and visible it becomes. So, as a developer I need to think 10, sometimes 20 steps ahead.
We already have some pretty neat interface if we compare it to other platforms, sure there can be some minor improvements here and there, but it’ll all become possible once we have a developer or a team of developers.
The more we grow the more interest among translation service buyers we have. Agencies, project managers, sometimes even direct clients browse through our profiles (well, depending on your privacy settings of course).
I wrote a post about our main goals here: link to theopenmic.co
One of the goals is to leverage the power of the community and create new employment opportunities for all of us.
Since I believe that job-bidding hurts our profession, I want to try and build another type of community where focus is on people’s skills. Our profiles are pretty good at showcasing your fields of expertise. They also have several options for establishing a contact. I want to take it to the next level and make it super easy for people to find and hire translators. Maybe we’ll even guide them through the process and help them choose the best candidate for their job.
Having said that all of the above is the FUTURE both of The Open Mic and hopefully the future of our industry.
Right now The Open Mic is just a blogging platform with some not so popular social networking features.
Important thing is: both can co-exist. The blogging will always be the face of The Open Mic, while marketplace, etc. will be an added feature.
Both are equally important and if we work hard enough we can make it work without irritating people.
Everything I develop here has one goal: ADD VALUE to the community and to the industry in general.
I think that I see some things a bit differently. I learn a lot from startups and technology companies and I want to apply that knowledge to our profession and industry.
Dear Dima,
What you are doing here is fabulous! And you are giving it all for free!
We all here are your guests!
And, boy, have you been a wonderful and patient host to us all! 🙂
I know that most of us, ungrateful “guests” that we are :), mostly express what we like, don’t like, wish to see , etc. and you have been kind enough (more than enough!) to find the time to answer each of these.
Now…
You know how much I love this place! 🙂 And if I have not been able to express it so far, I should then say it very directly:
Since I love it so much, I wish to see OM becoming the FB+TW+Medium+Quora+Blogger +Google+ +etc. , all together, specially created and functioning for everybody involved in our loved profession and business. That is, I wish for the OM to be not just a blogging space, not just another online community, but a place for meetings and exchanging news and experience and thoughts, and for asking and answering, for learning and teaching, and even for having fun. 🙂
I believe that should this get achieved, it will unleash an ‘avalanche’ of fast membership increase, large popularity, strong interest by users, advertisers, developers of translation-related tools, etc., which, in its turn, shall soon start filling the ‘coffins’ 😉 🙂 and ensure yet further improvement and development.
So, what I said above, and on other occasions, has always been with these thoughts on my mind.
I DO understand that it shall take complete dedication, lots of hours of work of an entire team (and not just one man) and time to achieve all that!
But … Hey, Rome was not built in a day (or two 😉 ) 🙂
That all said, here are a couple of ideas on how it all may start:
– Gather a Board of Inspectors. Each of its members should be given the task to meticulously revise a certain aspect of the OM, and offer his/her opinions on what is all right and what needs to be improved. Ideally, these people should also be able to actually do some of the recommended improvements, should that be within their skills. All this – for free of course! 🙂
– Gather a Board of Executives – a team of people, who would be willing to donate some of their time to share and discuss with you, as the owner of the OM, their practical ideas on the options for the development of OM. This team should also be able to reach an agreement on issues and/or suggestions/opinions placed by the Board of Inspectors, as well as by the community (through the Awesome Support and Trello), take respective decisions, and finally, start implementing these decisions into real action, based on their own experience, skills and connections.
– Appoint a Board of Administrators – people who would be willing to, again, voluntarily act as ‘administrators’ of the site. Each one of them could start taking care of things focusing on one or another of the OM activities – present or/and future such.
I believe that with such teams at work, you will be able to “breathe” and cope with the enormous amount of work that for the moment you’re doing all and only by yourself.
As we have a saying: “Two heads are better than one” 🙂
Yup … this is what I think.
Not necessarily to be accepted and/or approved, I know, but just wished to share.
🙂
Let me know if I could be of any service!
I think your biggest problem is the financial side. You need some sort of a revenue stream, because you cannot both expand Open Mic indefinitely and keep it as a one-person business, as you acknowledge yourself. There are three classical models for financing a web-based service – advertising, subscription and donations – and my advice would be to take a bit of quiet time to consider each of them carefully and see which can be made to fit the closest to your vision for Open Mic.
Thank you so much, Nigel! It all makes sense. I’m leaning towards a donation model, at least in the beginning, so we could cover some basic costs and expand our team to at least 2 people 🙂
Not sure about subscriptions, yet. It’s very enticing, but it has to be executed to the perfection. Subscription gotta have some massive added value to make sense in the eyes of end-users. We’ll see how it goes.
Thank you so much for your advice!
Hi Dmitry- I knew you did a lot (you seem to be everywhere, all the time) but this is too much!! While I’m very grateful for what you do, I’m also an entrepreneur juggling too many plates and I know EXACTLY what that feels like– and we both know it can’t and shouldn’t continue. I agree with Nigel and Rossitsa: you need to delegate responsibility (I like R’s idea of a board) and look for funding.
I think maybe your vision for the site and the profile of who is already here participating may bring you part of your answer. Who is here blogging? (the following is my impression, but I think you may want to consider a survey to get a more accurate result). I think in large part it is people who have experience, aren’t looking to score clients or get anything in return (in short, altruists who maybe aren’t that happy with other established forums). Who benefits the most from what they have to say? New professionals, transitioning translators. Maybe the model could be something like a reasonable subscription fee, with the fee waived for those with a certain number of blog posts or who share materials. That way the people who can gain the most feel invested, while people who want to share still have a good incentive (and can donate if they wish). It could also become a good place to look for professional referrals (someone to pass a job in my field in a different language pair, for example) as we get to see who is serious about contributing to the community and the profession, who writes well, who has good practices, etc.
On a different note, about growing your reach…. You’ve already got our interest and support here in Curitiba (after the Blab with Sheila). If you are interested, I would be willing to talk about The Open Mic at an upcoming Brazilian congress (I’m presenting at a health event in April) as well as maybe help organize a lunch or cocktail at ATA in San Francisco in November.
Thank you so much, Tracy! It seems like word-of-mouth is what really helps us grow and attract new amazing contributors, so I’d appreciate it if you could say a few words during your presentation.
We’re slowly, but steadily getting momentum, and to be honest I was a bit lazy in terms of community outreach. I really need to focus on people who already here, and then make an effort to promote The Open Mic on other fora, because it’s a great initiative and more people need to know about it.
You’re absolutely right that I’m probably doing too much, but don’t worry, I’m having a lot of fun and I learn an insane amount of new skills every single day. I think it’s an essential part for every founder/developer.
As far as subscription goes: what really attracts people is the amazing stories that are being shared, so closing our doors and putting up a paywall would probably annoy people and make them mad. I’m leaning towards a donation campaign, but I’m being super cautious about it because it a very big step.
I love the idea of advisers, and in a way I already have them, now we need to find executors so we could execute on all of our advice and ideas 🙂
Our audience is actually quite interesting: we have a small but very tight-knit group of contributors who actively share their ideas and knowledge. Most of them are respected professionals who are here because they love the medium and they want to share their knowledge on purely altruistic grounds.
But then there are also thousands of readers that visit The Open Mic every month. Some of them have profiles, but they don’t contribute much. Most of them are either just starting out in the profession and looking for tips, ideas and advice (and The Open Mic is probably the perfect place for that).
That part of our audience is much much larger than our awesome core band of authors and they also have different needs and requests (ability to find more work seem to be the most popular one).
That’s why it might seem sometimes that my actions are a little bit chaotic. This is simply because we have many different people here and each and every individual have different needs.
My goal as a developer figure out a way how to make everyone happy and bring value to every single member. I think this is the toughest one right now, but don’t worry. We’ll figure it out!
It’s been an amazing journey and I think The Open Mic will only get better and better, especially knowing that we have the support of such amazing people as you and many other active contributors who has been so kind to me, to this community and who believed in this project with all their heart.
Hello Dmitry,
Well, sorry, I know this post is 2 weeks old already, but I have to write it today simply and merely because I signed up today 🙂
First of all, I also would like to hugely thank you for all of what you are doing. You are definitely the almost-too-good-to-be-true man of the place! That one-in-a-million-guy that thinks differently and make things change. TOM is going to succeed greatly, there are no doubts about it, it is just a matter of time. Now, for that to happen, you have to be alive and healthy, right? 😀
So, according to what I decoded from your article, I believe your worries/problems/concerns come down to two things (except for the “Conservative Community and No Room for Disruption” point), two really valuable resources: time and money. So, we already gave a big step forward: from 5 original problems, we now have only two, or even one: how to better manage time and money (and have a life in the process!).
How then? This is my limited an humble view of it:
1) First of all, I don’t see anything wrong in you asking help from others without paying them. That would be ethically wrong if you’re making earnings, but if you are actually paying for it, what’s wrong with others also helping on board and obtaining the same than you (more exposure, more connectivity, and even learning)?
2) Having said that, the idea mentioned above about making teams for working on different areas makes perfect sense. Especially if these persons know exactly how you think and the direction (or the purpose) of the site is not changed.
That would save you a lot of time (valuable time!), so you would have more time for work, more time for your family, and more time to think about solutions in other aspects of TOM. It would also save you money that you don’t need to pay for those tasks.
3) Which brings us to the money issue. More specifically, to the funding issue. Well, you wouldn’t believe how amazing companies have started with crowdfunding. Well, we now know they are great, but if they were not funded, they may not have existed or gone that far. I won’t recommend a specific site for this, because I’m sure you’re smart (more than!) enough to choose the most suitable.
3b) Another (more commercial, and not necessarily great) idea related to this is making reviews of products, books, etc. and placing a link to them with a… I can’t remember the name, but they pay you for each purchase. In which case, of course, you would warn that the link is sponsored.And you don’t need to be deceiving or exaggerated in your review, just look at things from the user’s perspective and recommend the product (if it is recommendable!).
4) About the particular point that you mentioned above related to how a negative attitude punishes us and the whole translation industry, I think that’s one of the things that makes TOM different. The simple key is to keep it positive. Here, it doesn’t matter how many diplomas you have, how many words per day you can translate, or in the opposite corner of the ring, who’s the cheapest guy, who’s willing to do the most incredible, unacceptable work: what matters here is to be positive, to learn from colleagues, to help them, and to push forward the translation race (ha, ha, joke!). I think that should keep every frustration aside. Still there’s one more thing that would help.
5) But I think this one was mentioned above by someone (sorry, I can’t find it now), and it is voting the comments. If most of us are positive, a negative comment will never be really successful, will it? NOTE: when I say “a negative comment”, you know what am I referring to, not to just someone who view things differently, but to… those that all of us receive sometimes.
6) This is another idea, but it is aimed at improving the overall experience in general and to make TOM even more different. Why? Believe me: distinguishing TOM from PROZ (and alike), rather than achieving what they did, will become into your (and then our!) biggest asset in the long run. So, what is it? How to do it? Well, a couple of things.
6a) First: tests. Yes, OK, a lot of people has incredible degrees, and it’s true, there are other persons translating without them. Yet, that’s not just as simple as that. Because there are, just for the sake of using an example, translators with a degree in translation that translate an engineering document, yet they have absolutely no degree in engineering. The opposite happens, too. It is also true that some translations made by translators with diplomas and so on sound anything but natural (and have mistakes!). Yes, all that glitters is not gold. (DISCLAIMER: This is not to deny that some translators with degrees should teach translations because they are authentic cracks!). The specialization topic comes into play here as well, but I’m making this too long already, sorry.
So what about making volunteer juries and preparing tests per language combination and per field of specialization, setting clear rules, and going for it. After which we can have our specialists classified due to their actual talent. Of course, all of what i’m saying are just ideas that can be questioned and improved as much as the community and you may like to do so.
6b) Last one, but I think it would be enjoyable (and would add value to the community, make it more renowned, help the translators, and more importantly even attract some clients: contests. Yes, you would like to attract end clients. One good way to do so is, instead of translators fighting for the lowest rate, having them fighting for the highest quality. Now, agencies may not necessarily love this idea as much as end clients. Imagine you want to translate your website, TOM, to many languages. And some guy comes and offers you that he has a great team of translators that would be willing to compete for providing you the best translation, because not only they get paid, that is a badge in their CV and reputation (and in their field! TOM could also award badges to the first 100 or something). So you pay the same or maybe a little more, but you’re sure to get the best. How to pay? Well, Some sort of system where the translation may be divided by little segments, and then every translator translates the whole thing, and then only the best translation of each segment gets paid (the jury might be provided by the client, or at least not know who translated which segment). If a best segment was identically translated by more than one translator, the payment of that segment would be divided in equal parts between them.
Well, I am sorry, I know this was extremely long and hope I am not going to end up banned on my first day for being a little (?!) talkative. I’ve just tried to through some ideas in the table. HTH!
Hey Nico!
Let me just start by saying: Warm welcome to The Open Mic family and wow! What an amazing comment! I really appreciate that you took the time to write it. I love your suggestions and actually I believe we already have some of the suggestions on our Trello board: link to trello.com (this is where our community members share their ideas and vote for other ideas, this is also where you can keep track of the development)
I completely agree that contests and even tests can make our community more credible in the eyes of translators and clients. I just don’t know how to implement it yet. Because that would require some bad-ass custom coding. Let alone that we would need to write a comprehensive step-by-step outline before we can even implement that.
But those ideas are really great!
I agree that at the end of the day it all comes down to time and money. But fear not! I’m onto it already 🙂
I just published another post that will help me with growth: link to theopenmic.co
And in the upcoming months I will be getting ready for a full-fledged donation campaign. It is already in the works. I’m also planning to switch my focus onto community engagement even more. I want to focus on people who’re already here to make sure they’re having a great time and help them get the most out of this platform.
So yeah, slowly but steadily we’ll overcome those challenges and fears together and I have no doubts that The Open Mic will be a huge success and bring a lot of value to the community.