Greater than 9 minutes, my friend!

Thank you.

No, seriously, thank you for reading this.

These days a lot of people say “Thank you” like it doesn’t mean anything, but I honestly want to thank you for reading this. Thank you for taking a few minutes of your time from what is probably a pretty busy schedule.

Words cannot describe what this passion project means to me.

It all started as an idea.

The idea of uniting the brightest minds of this industry. Bringing together people who deeply care about the future of our profession.

People who are not afraid to do or say something.

People who understand all the challenges and problems of this industry and passionate enough to try to solve them.

People who enjoy helping each other and simply love inspiring and motivating others to follow their dreams.

And this is how The Open Mic was born.

The Open Mic is a new blogging platform/community for translators.

It was designed with one single goal: shape up the future of translation industry.

I’m always encouraging people to write, say something, add something valuable to the conversation.

The Open Mic creates a unique space where everyone can read and write, teach and learn, motivate and inspire.

This is a place where newbie translators can improve the skills and learn about marketing, business, web design, social media, translation, freelancing and many other things.

This is a place where seasoned translators can share their knowledge, give back to this amazing industry, build online authority and lead by example.

A place that will be absolutely free and without any paywalls or membership fees.

A truly community-driven website, that places YOU and YOUR CONTENT front and center.

You probably think that I’ve lost my mind, but I believe in this project with all my heart and I think you’ll love it too.

About This Beta

One thing I know about The Open Mic is that it’s amazingly complex. The level of detail and passion behind every single element is incredible. And I’m not saying it because I developed it. I’m saying it because it’s the truth. Open Mic is easily one of the most ambitious projects in the translation industry.

To be honest, I’m completely intimidated by its scale and massiveness.

I feel like I’m doing something important. Something that can change things, solve our common problems and help a lot of people.

At the same time, I realize that without the support of the community this project is impossible.

I have a lot of passion and faith, but sometimes you need a helping hand. You need the support of the people you can trust. People, who are not afraid to try and test something new. People who love building and creating beautiful things.

This is why I invited YOU to this private beta.

Because I love how passionate you are about this industry. I love your ideas. I think that you and I share same values and I value your opinion.

Getting Started

Even though The Open Mic is far from release I tried to make sure that everything works perfectly for this beta.

I really didn’t want to bother you with something overly complicated because I value your time and effort.

I’ve been testing it all by myself for a few months and everything seems to be working pretty well.

But every user is different and that’s why I need your help.

Everything is pretty  straightforward:

1. Create your free account: https://theopenmic.co/register (you can sign up with one of your favorite networks, it takes less than a minute)
2. Activate your account via email (you’ll receive an email with activation link).
3. Log in and start playing around with all the cool features of The Open Mic.
4. Share your thoughts, suggestions and impressions with me so I could make The Open Mic even better!

Pretty easy, isn’t it? 🙂

Bellow are some of the cool features that I want you to try:

Account Registration

Registering an account is easy. The Open Mic aims to build an incredible community, where translators, interpreters, translation agencies, project managers, translation associations and direct clients can co-exist.

Different account types is probably the most ambitious aspect of The Open Mic. The goal here is to make The Open Mic a sort of a Dribble.com for translators.

I really want to help translators showcase their talents in a meaningful and beautiful way and get hired. It’s not a job-bidding platform (I think translation industry is sick and tired of them).

The Open Mic is more of a community where everything you do or say can improve your online visibility and attract potential clients.

I recommend registering your account using one of the 6 social networks:

Registration takes less than a minute and should be pretty intuitive.

User Profiles

From a designer’s point of view User Profiles on The Open Mic are absolutely stunning!

 

I flexed all of my design muscles to make them look modern, clean and attractive.

They’re also very flexible in terms of what you want to share/hide.

After you register and login you’ll be able to edit your profile information.

Just go to your profile page by clicking on your name in the menu:

And then click on a little cogwheel on your right-hand side:

Editing your profile information is probably the most time-consuming part of the beta, but I would really appreciate it if you could give it a try.

When completed your Open Mic profile will look absolutely gorgeous. Here is my profile, for example.

Storytelling and Reading Experience

This is the central pillar of The Open Mic.

Open Mic is a blogging platform.

And the ability to write, read and share stories is the essential part of The Open Mic experience.

The Open Mic was designed to facilitate knowledge-sharing in the Translation Industry.

It features an amazing Publishing Tool which you can use to publish new stories on The Open Mic.

It’s far from perfect and, of course, cannot be compared to what Medium.com offers in terms of visual editing, but we have a pretty cool WYSIWYG editor as well as an awesome set of tools for Search Engine Optimization.

I know it sounds a bit intimidating and scary, but in reality publishing new stories on The Open Mic is super easy.

And I encourage you to do this.

Just go to the menu and click on Publish New Story:

P.S.: When you publish, please don’t share it on other social media yet. The Open Mic is not open to the public and I’m trying to keep everything under wraps for the period of this beta which will last for about a month or so. Once we launch, you’ll be able to share your stories with the whole world 🙂

P.P.S.: If you decide to republish a story that was originally published on your personal blog don’t forget to add a link in the specific field of the Publishing Tool:

That way Google will give all the credit to the original blog.

If you check the recent stories on The Open Mic you’ll see that I’m republishing the stories from my own blog too 🙂

If you’re a blogger The Open Mic can help you give new life to your older content, find new audience and help us build an ultimate knowledge base where thousands of translators will be able to learn and improve their skills.

And if you’re not a blogger, there is no reason to be intimidated by this whole writing thing.

With Open Mic, every translator can be a writer. Your stories are published instantly without any moderation.

You can manage and delete them anytime:

So, go ahead, try it! You’ll love it!

The Open Mic Community

There’s this one GIF that pops into my head when I think about the community aspect of The Open Mic:

I mean, seriously, what’s not to like?

You can share your thoughts and ideas on your wall:

You can share links to you blog post or the articles you found on the web, you can even upload your pictures and share Youtube videos.

You can follow people you know or like and they can follow you back.

You can send private messages to your colleagues.

You can leave comments on other people’s stories and receive replies.

There is also an awesome gamification element where you can earn points and badges for everything you do on The Open Mic.

What makes The Open Mic community unique is that it was designed exclusively for translators and interpreters.

In the world where everyone is so focused on automating the shit out of their social networks or sees them as a marketing platform, it’s nice to have a quiet little place where you can just relax, be yourself and chit-chat with your friends and colleagues.

Feel free to check out our Live From The Open Mic page, follow your fellow colleagues, and post something on your wall.

It’s awesome and fun!

The Purpose Of This Beta

Everything that you see here was designed by me.

And I realize that it’s a good idea to gather some initial feedback before I launch The Open Mic and open it to the public.

Because I really want it to go well, this project is very important to me and I feel like it can be a start of something new.

Something that’ll change our industry and shape up the future of our profession.

This is why I need your help.

I want you to help me make The Open Mic even better.

Register your account and try all of our features and share your feedback.

There is no rush, do it when you have some free time. There is really no need to dedicate 100% of your time to this beta test. Just spend a few minutes a day, try something, have fun with it. It doesn’t have to be a drag 🙂

And when you tried and tested every single thing I’d love to hear your feedback. Because in a way you’re my first users. You’re The Open Mic Pioneers!

Your feedback will help me make The Open Mic fun and enjoyable for all the translators out there!

How To Share Your Feedback

There are many ways you can share your feedback about this beta.

You can send me a private message here, on The Open Mic, but I think what would be really cool if you shared your feedback in a form of a new blog post by using our Publishing Tool.

Or you can share your thoughts on your wall and tag me in your wall post (type @Dmitry and the select my name from a drop down list to tag me).

If you use your wall feel free to use the hashtag #OpenMicBeta.

That will help us keep everything organized.

And I think it’ll be super awesome to have this feedback online as this will allow us to show the behind the scenes of the development process to our future users.

By the way, I’m writing a Developer Diary, feel free to check that one out too. It’s a great way to follow the development process and learn about everything that’s happening on The Open Mic.

When sharing your feedback, please answer these questions:

1. What do you like about The Open Mic?
2. What do you hate about The Open Mic?
3. What should we improve?
4. What was the most challenging part? Was something way too complicated?
5. Any design/usability suggestions?

And that’s it! Thank you for taking your time to read this and thank you for trying The Open Mic.

This project is impossible without you and I really hope you’ll love it.

Feel free to ask me any questions in the comments below and I’ll be happy to help you if you have any problems or concerns about The Open Mic.

By the way, there is also a pretty complex FAQ section that can be found here.

I answered some of the trickiest and hardest question there.

P.S.

As you can see, this project is not some amateurish website that will be gone once I ran out of ideas.

That will never happen.

I’m investing all of my time and money into The Open Mic because I honestly want to improve this industry and help us get rid of our most common problems: low rates, lack of knowledge and inspiration, corporate greed, lack of trust and support.

This project will unite translators across all the continents and I won’t stop until I achieve this goal.

The Open Mic is absolutely free from ads or influence from 3rd parties. There are no membership fees, everything is free and I intend to keep it that way forever.

I realize that there I high chance it won’t get much traction it needs.

I understand that there will be lots of criticism and nay-sayers.

I understand that it will be ridiculously hard to make sure the content is good.

I understand that there will be people trying to abuse the system.

I understand that not everyone will be happy and someone will leave disappointed.

I understand that it will be hard to get people on board.

But as Michael Scott Wayne Gretzky said:

That’s why I want to take that shot.

I want to give YOU a shot.

An opportunity to write and be heard.

This project means so much to me and I have never been more certain of anything in my entire life.

We can make it happen.

After all: