Newsletter - Events
Localization World Seattle Post-event Report
Xavier Maza, iDisc Information Technologies
Seattle hosted over 500 old friends and newcomers at the tenth edition of the Localization World Conference, where people exchanged information, business cards and enthusiasm in a comfortable environment by Elliot Bay. There were also chances to relax, enjoy live music, experience real "by the sea" navigation and envision the future of our industry based on collaboration and automation.
Seattle has been the cradle for the industry's largest event on localization, known as LocWorld by attendees, since its inception back in 2003 (this is the third time the event was held in Seattle ). Just like a kid trying to grow and willing to discover what awaits him in the world out there, LocWorld has been traveling around the globe, maturing and settling down, or at least feeling a bit more comfortable with its status as "the event" in the industry that should not be missed. Back in Seattle it all felt familiar, even for me, though it was my first time in that city. We were welcomed with windy weather and light rain, which according to the locals was good weather (coming from Barcelona, I'd say brrrr...).
Bell Harbor Conference Center once again hosted a family that is growing. This time attendees numbered more than 500 people, or if you lined them up, equaled 120 meters (or 131 yards, if we get it localized) and approximately 35 tonnes (77,160 pounds or 5512 stones...), if you put them on a balance. But these numbers do not do any justice to the actual weight of the people attending. We saw many of the usual faces (a.k.a. industry leaders and gurus), but also some of the new ones that will be leading this industry in the years to come and happily joining the family — because this is indeed a community. And soon we might just be one big family, if the current trend of mergers and acquisitions — already seen in the past few years and very present in the corridors of Bell Harbor — goes on. This topic seems to have raised a lot of interest among attendees both in the M&A session, which was a continuation from the Berlin event (given in first person by those who led several recent mergers) as well as in private conversations. I thought this was a trend for mature markets...
So, the question is, are we already a mature market when there is still so much to be achieved? Automation (the big promise) is still mostly unseen (but present), statistical machine translation, a bud willing to grow (nice presentation by Language Weaver on Monday guys!), visions of a collaborative environment, yes... these things are all nice but still within an industry smaller than the size of popcorn (I mean smaller than the size of the industry that sells popcorn in the US, as someone said in one of the workshops).
So, hey, lets face it, the best is still to come, and if we manage to remain feeling like a family and we agree on rules for it (and GALA is doing a good job there), we can all compete with each other while building our industry into a well-oiled machine that we can all benefit from, especially once the masses realize their products need to be sold in the language of their markets. A quick look at the web and how businesses are marketing their products makes clear: the potential to grow is still huge. It is still peanuts that we are dealing with right now, but if we keep fair play, we could keep the waters of this ocean pretty blue.
Besides that, I discovered that networking is great, Mark Jonckers is a hell of a cool guitar player, Renato managed to put his finger in the eye of the GALA team introducing a well planned 2010 GALA Plan by raising some concerns, the dinner on the cruise ship was priceless, courtesy of newly 100% merged global players OmniLingua and Oettli (and nobody left before the dinner was over), the view of the Seattle skyline from the Bay was priceless, too, and I found out that I still have to learn to distinguish tea from decaf coffee. Anything weaker than an espresso ristretto is a mystery to me...