Jargon or technical language is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a particular occupation, but any ingroup can have jargon. The key characteristic that distinguishes jargon from the rest of a language is its specialized vocabulary, which includes terms and definitions of words that are unique to the context, and terms used in a narrower and more exact sense than when used in colloquial language. This can lead outgroups to misunderstand communication attempts. Jargon is sometimes understood as a form of technical slang and then distinguished from the official terminology used in a particular field of activity.
The English word militant is both an adjective and a noun, and it is generally used to mean vigorously active, combative and/or aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in "militant reformers". It comes from the 15th century Latin "militare" meaning "to serve as a soldier". The related modern concept of the militia as a defensive organization against invaders grew out of the Anglo-Saxon fyrd. In times of crisis, the militiaman left his civilian duties and became a soldier until the emergency was over, when he returned to his civilian occupation.
A conference is a meeting, often lasting a few days, which is organized on a particular subject, or to bring together people who have a common interest. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, is the primary purpose of conferences. The term derives from the word confer.
A candidate, or nominee, is the prospective recipient of an award or honor, or a person seeking or being considered for some kind of position; for example:
Materiel is supplies, equipment, and weapons in military supply-chain management, and typically supplies and equipment in a commercial supply chain context.
A banquet is a formal large meal where a number of people consume food together. Banquets are traditionally held to enhance the prestige of a host, or reinforce social bonds among joint contributors. Modern examples of these purposes include a charitable gathering, a ceremony, or a celebration. They often involve speeches in honor of the topic or guest of honour.
Web conferencing is used as an umbrella term for various types of online conferencing and collaborative services including webinars, webcasts, and web meetings. Sometimes it may be used also in the more narrow sense of the peer-level web meeting context, in an attempt to disambiguate it from the other types known as collaborative sessions. The terminology related to these technologies is exact and agreed relying on the standards for web conferencing but specific organizations practices in usage exist to provide also term usage reference.
An academic conference or scientific conference is an event for researchers to present and discuss their scholarly work. Together with academic or scientific journals and preprint archives, conferences provide an important channel for exchange of information between researchers. Further benefits of participating in academic conferences include learning effects in terms of presentation skills and "academic habitus", receiving feedback from peers for one's own research, the possibility to engage in informal communication with peers about work opportunities and collaborations, and getting an overview of current research in one or more disciplines.
Open space technology (OST) is a method for organizing and running a meeting or multi-day conference where participants are invited to focus on a specific, important task or purpose. The agenda and schedule of presentations are partly or mostly unknown until people begin arriving. The scheduling of speakers, topics, and locations is created by people attending once they arrive. A debriefing document is created at the end of each OST meeting, summarizing what worked and what did not. Harrison Owen created the method in the early 1980s as an alternative to pre-planned conferences, where conference organizers predetermined speakers and time was often scheduled months in advance. OST instead relies on decisions made by participants once they are physically present at the live event venue. OST was among the top ten organizational development tools cited between 2004 and 2013.
Event management is the application of project management to the creation and development of small and/or large-scale personal or corporate events such as festivals, conferences, ceremonies, weddings, formal parties, concerts, or conventions. It involves studying the brand, identifying its target audience, devising the event concept, and coordinating the technical aspects before actually launching the event.
An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid hierarchical aspects of a conventional conference, such as sponsored presentations and top-down organization.
The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the group or organisation, presides over meetings of the group, and is required to conduct the group's business in an orderly fashion.
Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826.
A fishbowl conversation is a form of dialogue that can be used when discussing topics within large groups. Fishbowl conversations are sometimes also used in participatory events such as unconferences. The advantage of fishbowl is that it allows the entire group to participate in a conversation. Several people can join the discussion.
Corporate entertainment describes private events held by corporations or businesses for their staff, clients or stakeholders. These events can be for large audiences such as conventions and conferences, or smaller events such as retreats, holiday parties or even private concerts.
Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year are words of the year lists published annually by the American dictionary-publishing company Merriam-Webster, Inc. The lists feature ten words from the English language. These word lists started in 2003 and have been published at the end of each year.
At the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 2003, trade ministers from 146 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), representing 93 percent of global commerce, convened in Cancún, Mexico, in September 2003. The conference was held at the Cancún Centro de Convenciones, Cancún. The goal of this meeting was to set a direction for nations within the WTO to negotiate agreements on agriculture, non-agricultural market access, services, and special treatment for developing countries. The negotiations were supposed to be completed by January 1, 2005. Although the agreements had a set date to come to terms, the Cancun Ministerial Conference ended up failing in its mission and did not come to any firm decisions to fix the problems it sought to address. Participants failed to make global trade negotiations concrete and foundered at that time, so the next steps were uncertain. However, attempts were made afterwards to learn from this failure. Within the committee, there exists a hierarchy within the World Trade Organization. It is made up of trade Administrators that come from all the different sectors of the WTO.
Alumni are former students or graduates of a school, college, or university. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for groups of women, and alums or alumns as gender-neutral alternatives. The word comes from Latin, meaning nurslings, pupils or foster children, derived from alere "to nourish".
According to Robert's Rules of Order, a widely used guide to parliamentary procedure, a meeting is a gathering of a group of people to make decisions. This sense of "meeting" may be different from the general sense in that a meeting in general may not necessarily be conducted for the purpose of making decisions.
Sealioning is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity, and feigning ignorance of the subject matter. It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate", and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings. The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki, which The Independent called "the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see".
