1) Networking: "Do what you love, love what you do... And then SHARE"
Apart from expanding contacts and networking, terminologists can use social networks to get established as professionals who solve terminology problems. They can, for example, research and ask questions to followers and establishing their expertise by answering questions. Social networks make it also easier to improve collaboration with experts to validate terminology and getting feedback and contribution to the terminology work.
Social media and blogs enable us to easily focus on the latest news and trends on terminology, providing us with regular updates.
- Social networks, if properly used, can be effectively used to find terminological resources.
- Blogs are useful to provide own opinions, reflections and for being an optimal environment for discussing different point of view.
- Twitter and Google Plus help us disseminate information, get visibility, link to useful information, follow interesting conferences we cannot attend through live-tweeting updates and live streaming (Periscope, Snapchat, Facebook live streaming).
2) Personal Learning Environment: "I am the owner of my learning"
Conscious strategies are involved by using social networks as technological tools to gain access to knowledge. 'Heutagogy' is the neologism hat fully embodies this new approach to technology mediated self education. It means, "I am the owner of my learning at the knowledge society".
3) Crowdsourcing terminology work:"Trust the network - it probably knows more than you do".
Since terminology work is expensive, why not involve the crowd to create and validate terminology? The crowd can help with coining new terms or names, vote for term name suggestions, comment on terminological entries. The crowd cannot do it alone but the terminologist has to be part of the process: terminologists, in this scenario, have to adapt themselves into a profile more similar to a mediator.
"Crowd" is by the way a generic term. “Nichesourcing” is a more suitable neologism, it stands for “complex tasks distributed amongst a small crowd of amateur experts...rather than the ‘faceless’ crowd” (B.I.Karsch).
The solitary terminologist vs the crowd powered terminologist
Old-fashioned terminology is an “in vitro work”: there is no research into term usage, it draws on a limited panel of experts, and takes a long time for validation.
Crowdsourcing instead, has proven to be a valuable model in terminology work in particular for:
- Term collection;
- Concept based structuring (concept+ "#" on Twitter);
- Creation of new terms;
- Control of terminology usage.
- Let's share knowledge! Disconnected experts are invisible to the network and irrelevant to the system.
- Let’s leverage the power of blogging and Social Media! Blogs are sometimes earlier than newspapers in discussing new topics and concepts and crucial to raise awareness on the importance of terminology
Trust the network - it probably knows more than you do
People have the power: the crowd-powered terminologist
