Argentina, Holland, Russia, and Greece: Next Events

This week I am preparing presentations and topics for the next event season that is kicking off. I am particularly excited about four events:

• The 7th Language and Technology Conference in Córdoba, Argentina, which kicks off on August 20th. I have been attending this event organized by IMTT since 2005, and it has consistently ranked among the best events in my opinion (Kirti Vashee and I also discussed it in a video conversation posted previously here). This time, the Cecis are taking a plunge and adding a Portuguese language track to the event, trying to congregate the two major Latin American markets under a single conference. A quick look at the program shows that the organizers have invested in high-caliber speakers with content that is extremely relevant to the translator community. If you are in Argentina, Brazil, Chile or Uruguay, there is still time to register and show up!
• On September 9th, the Dutch Association of Translation Agencies is hosting their annual event called TMT - The Future is Here. This is my first time attending and speaking at the Dutch ATA, but I like their model of having one keynote and several workshops after it. Very hands on, very practical. The topics will be around tools, marketing/media, and post-editing.
• Translation Forum Russia, September 23-25 in St. Petersburg, has just published its program with four tracks filled of high level content and great local and international speakers. Last year was my first foray into the Russian market and I find it to be vibrant and in clear expansion. The organizers were kind enough to ask me to keynote the event, but I am actually very interested in checking out some of the local business-related tracks. The event is in Russian and English and I hope that they provide me with a personal interpreter, like they did last year, so that I can enjoy the local sessions. Bert Esselink (the guy who wrote the book on localization), Luigi Muzii (who just published a book of his own), Alison Toon, Anne-Marie Colliander Lind, Doug Lawrence, Noël Muylle are the international speakers and Irina Alexeeva, Ekaterina Ryabtseva and Vladimir Fakov the local stars.
• In November, ELIA - the association of which I am president - will be hosting its Networking Days in Athens. I am very involved with the program and I must say that, as usual, we will have a fantastic roster of speakers and unique topics of special interest for European LSPs. This time there will be a full track on Medical and Pharmaceutical translations. Among the confirmed speakers are Federico Garcea, from Microsoft MT; Mirko Plitt, from Autodesk; Artur Raczynski, from the EPO; and many others.

I will also be attending and presenting at Localization World, in Santa Clara, and Tekom, in Wiesbaden, both in October. These are much larger and customer centered events. I will be writing about them in another post.

Three Takeaways from Localization World Barcelona

The European edition of Localization World ended last week in Barcelona with a record-breaking attendance of 550 participants from the supply and demand side of the language services industry. The program committee put together and excellent roster of speakers with extremely valuable content.

I was able to attend several sessions and I took note of three comments that I think are relevant for all the players in the language field:

• Oleksandr Pysaryuk, from Research In Motion, indicated that LSPs might re-think traditional offerings and provide services around internationalization, user experience research, usability research, usability testing, acceptance testing, and local UI design. This is a clear message to LSPs who want to go beyond translation and talk about value-added services with their clients.
• Derick Fajardo, from Nuance, in the panel that we shared about Online Bidding, mentioned a quote that he hopes will put him on the Wall Street Journal someday: "Cost rules, quality is assumed, but in the end, schedule wins." This statement confirmed a comment by Tim Young from Cisco in the morning keynote panel. When I asked him which of the several metrics that he tracked for his internal clients was the most important for them, he answered forthright: "On time delivery."



Danica Brinton (photo by
Agnieszka Gonczarek)

• Danica Brinton (photo), from Zynga presented some fascinating data about the impact that localization has in the adoption of games for this fast-growing company. But the interesting part for me was some practical information about the relative value of certain markets. Norway, with a population of less than 5 million, generates more revenue for Zynga than Indonesia, the country with 230 million inhabitants and the biggest number of Facebook users in the world. It is clear that other factors than number of internet users drive localization decisions.

Of LISA's Insolvency and Other Events

"As of 2011 February 28, the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) is insolvent. In spite of the financial constraints LISA faces as an organization, we are exploring ways to continue the association's good works for the industry."

With this short notice on their website, LISA announced what had been obvious for some of us, industry insiders for a while: The LISA model was unsustainable and obsolete. Since the formation of GALA and the successful series of events organized by Localization World, LISA had become irrelevant. IBM's withdrawal from LISA a couple of months ago was the coup de grâce.

I was always very fond of LISA. It was there that I made my first presentation to the industry. It was there found a buyer for Lazoski, Beninatto, my company in Latin America. It was there that I met my wife. And it was there that I forged strong relationships that I maintain to this date.

But I am not sad. The industry is much more mature than it was in 1990. Companies have many more choices, and the fragmentation of industry events is an unavoidable reality. Localization World and its separate specialty events like the upcoming Apps Go Global and Worldware Conferences cater to specific needs of the buyer and vendor communities without the requirement of a hefty membership fee.

GALA, which was originally created as a vendor-only association, is now trying to attract localization buyers to its membership, and will certainly pick up the crumbles from LISA. The industry must only avoid repeating the same mistakes and I certainly hope that GALA does not become another pay-for-play event organizer and remains true to its mission to promote the industry as whole.

As a conference-hawk, I have shared my views about industry events several times in this and other blogs. For a refresher, take a look at my posting about specialty events and at the video conversation I had with Kirti Vashee on the subject of events.

Specialty Events: Localization Project Managers Round Table and Vendor Management Seminar

I was having a conversation with a client today who asked me about the benefits of the different types of events. She was specifically asking about the Localization Institute's 2010 Localization Project Managers Round Table to be held in Lake Tahoe next month.

My response was that different events cater to different audiences and that choosing the right one is sometimes hard. But I discussed some criteria that might be useful for you when evaluating events.

• Specialty events are excellent for sharing experiences with peers. The topics tend to be focused and very relevant for people in a certain position in the organization. That is the case of the Project Managers Round Table promoted by the Localization Institute and the Vendor Management Seminars organized by IMTT. Contrary to larger generic events, the main value of a specialty event is education and peer-to-peer networking. They seldom have booths and few salespeople attend.

• Geography-focused events tend to address issues that are common to people in different roles in a company, but with a local slant. Good examples are the ELIA Networking Days, the ALC Conference and Think Latin America. The programs tend to address business issues that are common to a certain region and might not appeal to a global audience.

• Generalist events like Localization World, LISA and GALA tend to provide something for everybody, with varying degrees of success.

So, my final recommendation for this client was to look at her calendar and try to attend at least one Specialty event (she is a client-side Project Manager and is going to the Round Table), a Geography-focused event, and one Generalist event. That will provide her with education, networking, and a bunch of salespeople calling her after each event (but she promised she will stay with Milengo).