I agree with you about the industry–there will never be a cohesive and generally accepted definition. And people will absolutely abandon the term. Maybe that’s all part of growth and change. Maybe something better will come after this.

All I know is that I’m listening, and I’m along for the ride.

A

There are times when in order to come together for a great purpose individuals need to put aside their differences to accomplish something bigger. Until we are all willing to do that I believe that the term Virtual Assistant will continue to become bastardized and watered down until those of us who are still proud of using the term will have no choice but to abandon it.

Thank you for opening a conversation about this.

When I formalized the profession in ’97, I had specific definitions for what Virtual Assistance is/isn’t, and for what VAs do/don’t do. AssistU still holds to those definitions. I’ve always felt it important for us as an industry to have strong definitions because without them, I knew the public would end up defining who we are and what we do–and we wouldn’t like it very much.

As we now know, VAs who have disagreed with me have proliferated the profession with a variety of definitions, *and* we’re not liking the confusion we’re seeing from potential clients, OR what the potential clients believe to be true (believe to be the definitions) about who we are and what we do.

I still believe the only way to resolve it and for us to stand apart from what’s happening in offshoring is to create *one* strong position about it. Only then will we stand a chance of having people listen, and only then can we “correct” the media.

Right now? We just keep shooting ourselves in the foot.

A

Thank you for opening a conversation about this.

When I formalized the profession in ’97, I had specific definitions for what Virtual Assistance is/isn’t, and for what VAs do/don’t do. AssistU still holds to those definitions. I’ve always felt it important for us as an industry to have strong definitions because without them, I knew the public would end up defining who we are and what we do–and we wouldn’t like it very much.

As we now know, VAs who have disagreed with me have proliferated the profession with a variety of definitions, *and* we’re not liking the confusion we’re seeing from potential clients, OR what the potential clients believe to be true (believe to be the definitions) about who we are and what we do.

I still believe the only way to resolve it and for us to stand apart from what’s happening in offshoring is to create *one* strong position about it. Only then will we stand a chance of having people listen, and only then can we “correct” the media.

Right now? We just keep shooting ourselves in the foot.

A

It seems to me, especially in the United States, we complain about the outsourcing to overseas markets but we don’t complain to the right people. We have to be the ones to improve our life and in the process, perhaps, improve the lives of those who think differently. The unfortunate aspect is that we live in the U.S. where our cost of living is higher than in many countries where the cost of living is much lower. We may think they are being cheap to be cheap. It may be those rates are what the market will bear in their homes while those outside take advantage because of other things, like greed and selfishness.