The Most Worthwhile Conferences to Attend in 2011 and Finding the Real Customer

This is an expansion of a conversation I had with Renato Beninatto which he also blogged on and was also video taped here. I am sharing my opinion here not so much because I am endorsing one event or the other, rather this list is just my personal list of preferences and nothing more. I do not claim there is any special status to my personal preferences and you may notice I tend to like conferences where translation technology is emphasized.

We live in an age, where increasingly marketing and corporate-speak is challenged, undermined and sometimes even seen as disingenuous and false. (Raise your hand if you trust and respect corporate press releases).  Today we see customer voices rise above the din of corporate messaging, and taking control of branding and corporate reputations with their own “authentic” discussions of actual customer experiences, while marketing departments look on haplessly. I think this phenomenon is happening on many fronts, including conferences in the localization industry. There are too many events in the L10N industry that seem formulaic, routine, repetitive and engineered based on the same old viewpoints. This, I think affects the ability of these events to really spark dialogue, excitement and generate vital learning experiences that make these conferences must-attend events. While these events remain useful for “face-time”, they often have little value for really engaging attendees at a professional level and providing insights that drive new action plans.

What makes for a great conference or professional industry event? To my mind: high quality content, interactive and engaged audiences in sessions that broaden one’s horizons, interesting people who continue the professional dialogue outside of the sessions and share learning experiences and of course a good location. And if you can offer all of this at a reasonable cost, even better. A great professional event is characterized by learning, the more intensive the learning experience, the better. The best ones leave you thinking for awhile after the event.  Intense learning rarely happens at “really big” events because it is hard to scale this, but hopefully you have a few intense one-on-one interactions.

I also really like events that really focus on the customer: the real customer. The real customer would be the management team that runs, handles and is held accountable for success and failure of international initiatives (rarely the localization department of that company IMO). So the real customer would be senior sales, marketing, product management and customer support people who may also fund and direct the localization department mission in the global enterprise. (We rarely see them at any localization conferences because localization is rarely a central focus for them.) The real customer is more likely to focus on market share trends and customer satisfaction / loyalty  rather than word rates, fuzzy matching rates, TM ownership, SimShip or vendor management.

The question that Ultan O'Broin posed most recently in Quora was:

What Localization Conferences Are Worth Going To in 2011?

He also presents a categorization of these conferences as follows Generalist, Specialty and Geography-focused events. He said that he liked to attend one or two of each category and his preferences are stated in the links above. 

I still see myself as more of a pragmatic technology guy, trying to solve meaningful and useful translation problems (hopefully) with technology, rather than an industry insider (not quite a localization professional), so I would organize this a little bit differently but it still has much in common with Renato’s view. For MT especially it is all about understanding and learning how to use it at this point in time.  

I think there are 3 or more categories of conferences that touch localization and translation. The following is my very crude categorization. (Hopefully somebody can suggest a better categorization scheme. Please feel free to tear this apart).

 
1) Traditional Corporate L10N & Translation Focused Conferences
2) Translation Technology & L10N Research Focused Conferences
3) Special Focus & Miscellaneous  and

New Opportunities and Events/Industries/Markets to Explore 

If I limit myself to three or so in each category I would select the following events.

Category 1: Localization World and ELIA are the best in terms of content quality and networking value IMO. Localization World is the largest industry insider event (and the only one where I have seen a real customer view occasionally) and ELIA is a great example of sharing and collaboration between peers and competitors. This is the most crowded conference category and my recommendation would be for people to choose carefully amongst the available options (using location and content as a guide).  There are some who prefer the LISA and GALA versions of this category and they can also be good and sometimes slightly different like the LISA event at UC Berkeley.

Category 2:  TAUS Annual User Conference for MT focus from enterprise customer perspectives, (not the regional meetups held around the world) even though this event has some overlap with the first category.

AMTA for a deep dive on machine translation related issues that covers both the gory details of the technology and its use in public and private sectors, but this event has a very strong US focus.

LRC for broad and innovative localization research and thinking that is truly focused on the next generation of needs.

Translingual Europe 2010:  This was a free event held in Berlin that I think shows promise had much about MT and broader language technology initiatives across the world but especially in the EU. 

Category 3: IMTT events have great content and a wonderful collaborative and sharing culture and I also think are one of the few events where you really get to see both LSP and translator perspectives engage together.

AGIS to understand the issues in the non-profit world where translation is often linked to national development priorities or alleviation of information poverty. A different perspective and much more ambitious initiatives that involve national policy oftentimes. I am willing to bet that the leaders in the non-profit arena will also be the first to really use technology well and drive standards forward. I suspect that the most interesting crowdsourcing initiatives will also come from the non-profit area and passionate community leaders rather than global enterprises.

tekom is an opportunity for  localization professionals to connect to a broader customer community and I hope that more of this happens in 2011. The industry can only grow and gain momentum by becoming more involved with larger broader and vertical market focused shows which are important to real customers.

I think some of the smaller events can also be very interesting e.g. The last LISA Crowdsourcing round table was informative and showed potential and promise but lost momentum because of weak follow-up. I am told that some of the smaller events in Eastern & Southern Europe also have very high quality content and great engagement. Web based events are growing in popularity but very few have found the right mix of content and engagement.

I hope that we will see more events focused on resolving issues around data interchange and exchange standards so that translation data flows much more easily and fewer on process standards.

New Opportunities and Events/Industries/Markets to Explore
Possibly the best and most exciting business opportunities and ability to learn about new long-term strategic opportunities are shows that have been off the beaten path and ignored by most industry insiders.

 
Some possibilities for translation industry collaborations in future and where I think the best opportunities lie for emerging translation and localization demand are listed below. Again just some suggestions and not a complete list by any means. It would be worth finding out which are the best conferences to meet customers, providers and thought leaders in the following areas and develop marketing communications that interest, educate and engage these attendees, on localization and translation issues.

• Travel & Hospitality,
• Customer Care, Customer Service & Support,
• Consortium for Service Innovation Events,
• eContent Publishers,
• eLearning and Online Education,
• eGovernment,
• eDiscovery & Litigation Support,
• Patent, Science & Technology,
• Social Media & MarComm / PR as well as
• Open Collaboration type events

I think video content will be a major new opportunity, and will likely cover all of the above segments. I have seen that there are video subtitling/dubbing focused conferences but have not attended one yet and I suspect that this is an area worth exploring as a long-term opportunity. Video content translation is likely to be the fastest growing new sector for the industry as Cisco estimates that 90% of IP traffic will be video related by 2013. If that is where the end-customer is, it makes sense to focus on it. I am sure mobile will also be a growing and strategic area.

 
Finally, I think we should all be exploring how to get more connected in to BRICI global commerce focused events. (This is more complicated than holding an event in China and/or India.) It is very likely that as the export/import sectors in these fast growing countries expands there will be events and conferences, that will be worth tapping into to really get access into these markets. I would bet that the best events will be organized by locals in these regions who are interested in globalization issues, possibly even government sponsored events.

Please join the discussion on Quora or comment on this blog as this is by no means a definitive or authoritative list. What do you think? And lets hope that we all find “a real customer” at the events we go to.

Using Translation as a Force to Address Information Poverty: AGIS 2010

I have the good fortune to reflect and report on the AGIS 2010 conference as we approach “the holiday season,” which is a time of reflection for many in the world. A time of goodwill and at least temporary good deeds for some. The conference was held in India, which can be a challenge because the basic infrastructure is still primitive, but the event went off well with very few glitches and I think AGIS is slowly building momentum.

AGIS stands for Action for Global Information Sharing, and is focused on conducting a resolute crusade against Information Poverty since its inception. The overall tone and tenor of this conference is very different from the typical conference in the world of enterprise localization (LocWorld, GALA, LISA). The focus is on making all kinds of knowledge and information accessible in places where it has never been available before, not just to sell products. There is clear evidence shared by many speakers, that shows that access to information creates the conditions for economic prosperity or perhaps even actually drives it. In some parts of the world localization is all about reducing information poverty and improving the human condition. Reinhard has provided a summary of the highlights of the event in his blog. There was also coverage here. And for those who ask why do need yet another conference in the industry, Reinhard explains below:

You might be asking yourself, “Why AGIS, why YALC (yet another localisation conference)? What makes AGIS so different?” Well, first of all, it is not owned by any particular organisation, it is not run for profit, and it is (almost) free to attend. Then, it takes place where people need localisation, not where people are rich enough to pay for it. Nothing is sold, nothing is bought at AGIS. And last but not least, AGIS attendees have a social agenda, not (just) a commercial one.

The highlights that can be also be found in the twitter stream on my Friendfeed (Scroll back to newer items to see the chronological sequence. I don’t know why Twitter has already made much of the data unavailable).  

In the keynote, Dr. Vijay Bhatkar (a digital visionary of India) pointed out how globalization and localization are tightly linked and how NLP, MT and language technologies are only just beginning their evolutionary march. He pointed out how Japan’s hopes for world dominance were stymied by linguistic issues and that access to knowledge and information in the 21st century will be key to building prosperity as an increasing part of the GDP of many nations will come from knowledge services. This is already true for India. He informed the Indians in the room, that India can not consider itself an IT power when 350 million people are illiterate and urged the community to preserve the Indian languages while continuing the push forward with English education. He also pointed out that both Telephone and TV are mostly language neutral but information cannot be, and localization is critical to broad access. 

Reinhard Schaler and the Rosetta Foundation are leading an initiative to build a platform to facilitate self configurable, distributed and shared data based global localization initiatives. CNGL and University of Limerick students provided overviews and demonstrations of these tools. Reinhard highlighted that each day 24,000 die children because of lack of access to basic healthcare information. That is 1 every 3 seconds! These deaths could be avoided if information was available more easily. This appears to be a primary motivator and raison d'etre for the Rosetta Foundation.

Ms. Swaran Lata painted a clear picture of the amazing complexity of the Indian linguistic landscape. 20+ major languages with some states having 3-4 languages and multiple scripts. The CDAC organization is attempting to solve the linguistic computing issues to ensure that Indian languages gain a stronger digital presence and are preserved. As Prof. Bhatkar asked: "Can you really say you know Hindi if you cannot  use it on a computer? This is key in the information age."  Ms. Lata described initiatives that focused on the digital education of youth, which interestingly also resulted in the knowledge being passed on to illiterate parents and grandparents. She talked also about initiatives to reach out to the “other side of India” to ensure that illiterate people are not left behind. As Indian consumers become more powerful, Indian languages are critical to reaching their purchasing power.

I spoke about how the Asia Online vision is finally coming to fruition, when we start rolling out a Thai Wikipedia comprising of translations of 3.5 million articles starting in January 2011. When all these articles are up and ready, Thailand will have the second largest Wikipedia in the world after the English one.  This is a huge boost from the current 60,000 article Thai Wikipedia, many which are just barely more than stubs. In contrast, the index alone for just the article titles in the English Wikipedia are in excess of 600,000 pages! The Asia Online project is an initiative that directly addresses information poverty. Shockingly it was also uncovered that the Hindi Wikipedia only has about 50,000 articles for a population of almost 400 million people! This means that a child that does not speak English is deprived of basic educational information access and has a fraction of the content available to an English speaking child.

Some other interesting information from the conference:

• Ravi Gupta pointed out there are 62,000 newspapers in India and 92% of these are not in English
• Subtitles do not work well in India because of literacy issues but they can also be a means of building literacy
• There are no English TV channels in the Top 100 TV channels in India but English speaking consumers are the wealthiest consumers
• Ravi Kumar, The President of  the Indian Translators Association made an impassioned plea asking that buyers and the community at large respect translators as professionals
• The CNGL team showed various elements of the open SOLAS platform they are making available to anybody who needs it
• Mahesh Kulkarni’s wonderful presentation on standards which he called traffic rules that ease both user and creator experience. He has a much more holistic and systematic view of standards than we see from the feeble standards initiatives in the traditional localization industry but he too, expressed the difficulties of getting good standards in place.
• He also pointed that that there are 670 million mobile phones in India and asked is this the end of the internet as we know it? 

 Mahesh Kulkarni and Raimond Doctor are a joy to behold; passionate, knowledgeable and driven in spite of having to deal with Indian governmental bureaucracy as part of their daily lives. Raimond is perhaps the most erudite and knowledgeable person I have met on comparative linguistics. He shares his deep knowledge and insight with a verve that draws you right into his delight for language. I hope that CDAC realize what treasures these men are, and gives them room and resources to execute on their vision and passion.

Reinhard also pointed out that the non profit world was substantially larger in terms of market potential and actual localization activities than the Fortune 500 market. Non-profit does not mean no payment, no recognition and jobs, it is in fact bigger than the energy sector in US.  

Take a look at this TED video to see how information access can change lives and empower people to learn, take control and transform their own lives.

If there is a revolution coming in translation – I think one is much more likely to see the first signs of the revolution at a conference like AGIS, rather than at more mainstream localization conferences. We see all the key elements lining up here: people focused on large scale collaboration infrastructure, community and crowdsourcing management, massive translation automation and standards and the most important ingredient of all: PASSION. We see people at this conference who are driven by a passion to change the world. We see people who are not making a lot of money but are still working long and diligent hours. We see people undertaking translation projects that will involve hundreds of millions of words on a routine basis. We see technology, collaboration tools & infrastructure and community coming together in ways that just does not happen at traditional professional translation events.  We see people who want to make an impact on the human condition. We hear and see people talking about nation building and the human right to knowledge. This kind of talk gets me all warm inside and I think this is what we all had in common, a “higher” sense of purpose and mission which does not equate to a stance of moral superiority as some might think. Many of the people here have a soul satisfying answer to the question: Why do you do what you do? Isn't that enough?

My interest in automated translation has always been related to the potential impact this technology has on improving information access and thus improving human lives across the world and also potentially improving the quality and depth of communication between linguistic groups, cultures and nations. One step on the way to Pacem in Terris? Foolish and idealistic perhaps, but we need to dare to dream first before we can actually make it happen. As a teenager, a wise man told me once, “You are the world and the world is you” and I have explored that statement ever since,  holding it close to heart as a seminal influence in my life.

Join and support the Rosetta Foundation and help make this into a movement that cannot be stopped. If you have the ability to influence a major corporate entity to get involved and support this please do so now, and join Reinhard as he forges and builds this new path to change the world for the better.

And as if that were not enough, I even had a brief meeting with former Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, who even in his nineties has a stature, grace and humility that is disarming. He was impressed by the Thai Wikipedia project I am involved with, and said it would be wonderful for India to do the same in Hindi. And thanks to my friend Vishal I also got to meet several industry leaders of emerging India who seek to build transparency and a relatively corruption free government.

I was also greatly heartened to see the corruption establishment take a serious blow when Minister Raja was exposed for taking obscenely huge bribes, in excess of $40 billion I believe. What makes corruption in India especially horrific is the complete lack of remorse and shame that these public officials have. India is on the move but still has far to go as the culture of corruption is everywhere you turn, and will not die easily. One of the other benefits of free flowing information is that it also makes this kind of self dealing and abuse of trust harder to maintain. Information poverty is also an enabler and friend of corrupt officials and thus this is yet another reason to address this issue. 

Happy Holidays to you all and I hope that you explore and find "goodness" in your life. And here is the link to holiday greetings in many languages.