To share or not to share

Before, I became a ProZ.com member in 2005, I didn’t know such thing (ProZ.com site) ever existed, but I had the notion that this kind of thing (i.e. ProZ.com and others like it) did in fact exist. Or was it because maybe at that time I was then a person who could not optimized a search engine well enough to land on a site such as ProZ.com. Or was it because I was not well informed.

Anyway, my first introduction to ProZ.com was not via googling or navigating certain keywords on the Net search engines, on the contrary, it was not a technological assistance, but via a non-technological assistance, yes, through a peer, a colleague and a friend who had been working on a task with me on a language based project online.

Up until now this friend still provides a good argument based knowledge transfer (simple term, a par excellent sparring partner) on translation via ProZ.com, KudoZ (“KudoZ is a terms help network. Through KudoZ, ProZ.com users offer each other, and guests, free assistance in translating tough terms.”). My friend, if you feel that it's you who had help me, let me say, ‘thanks a bunch and let’s drink coffee some time’. So, this is just preliminary bit of info on how I got to know ProZ.com.

Nevertheless, I didn’t just jump in and become a member until one month passed. The drive to join ProZ.com was a tingling curiosity that came from my friend’s response to using and becoming a member of ProZ.com.

At any rate, this story is about how I feel and how I think we should do and be concerned about on exercising our luxury of knowing ProZ.com so others can also be a part of this great forum on the Net to develop us professionally and mentally.

What I mean by exercising is to show our willingness to share information on such a trivial matter (sharing) yet it gives us great pleasure (I hope for all) that we are not alone in this venture of providing clients with language based service and bridging cultures.

On the downside though if we do share our luxury of knowing ProZ.com to peers, friends who are in the same line of business as us, we do fear competition. Yes, competition.

However, at first, my biggest fear by divulging information was that I might put myself into fierce competition and put myself in jeopardy by siding with a challenger and becoming less competitive and at the end of the day, not making enough money, when we do inform and share.

To overcome this, it did took some time for me to realize that if my friend didn’t reveal, his way of doing business, though at first he did seem reluctant, (the way I felt then) when I asked, we may not give others the benefit and joy of what we are doing now, as one singer in Jakarta stated, we spread and share happiness in doing what we do, the case here I guess is on the same equation, or put it simply so are we (spreading good professionalism).

Nonetheless, competition do give us an edge on how to enhance our way of doing business a bit better and feeling humble that we are not the best but we can be the best by getting the tools and the right attitude in doing what we do. But I guess not all of us agree on this, and if we do agree, let’s do the best for our profession and our forum. Let’s share, (comments, inputs, agrees, disagrees, neutral, etc.). Well, at least this is my outlook on this case. What do you think?