Newsletter - Message from the board
Message from the Board Q3 2006
Aki Ito
As I was working in my office one morning recently, three good pieces of news came into my e-mail inbox.
First was a message from Laura Brandon, GALA Administrator, telling me that the GALA membership had reached the 200 member milestone. Wow! Second was a note from Matthias Caesar telling me that collaboration with tekom had led to the adding a GALA-hosted localization track to their upcoming annual conference program and publishing an article about GALA in their publication “tcworld.” Cool. The last piece of good news came from Terukazu Konishi from Moravia IT Japan telling me that they established a team of volunteers who will plan and run the first GALA event in Tokyo, “GALA in Tokyo,” in September. Banzai!
I was very excited that morning because I was able to see the objectives for 2006 that the Board members had set in January turning into actions and results. If you recall, we identified our three main themes for 2006 as promotion, collaboration, and regional events. These activities are results of those efforts. Hitting the 200 member mark is a result of our promotion efforts, while collaboration with organizations such as Localization World and tekom are going well. And let me explain some details about the Tokyo regional event.
As a result of a small group discussion in our last semi-annual meeting in Barcelona, Mr. Konishi volunteered to become the leader of the first regional event in Tokyo. The original idea was to have a small cocktail party or dinner get-together for members in Tokyo. Soon, he found four active volunteers to help him shape this event: Ms. Satoko Yasuda from TechIndex, Mr. Jun Shibuya from SunFlare, and Ms. Yuki Imai and Mr. Munehisa Suzuki from TOIN.
This group of volunteers had something bigger than a cocktail party in mind. GALA in Tokyo will be held on September 26 at a hotel in Ginza, Tokyo. The theme of this half day event is globalization of the Japanese localization industry, and they will have two panel discussions: Trends in Sales & Marketing for Japan & Asia and Language Tools for Asian Languages. To add global perspective to this event, they managed to bring Renato Beninatto from Common Sense Advisory to be the guest speaker. After these sessions, the members and non-members will have a networking dinner.
The Board members and Laura provided tremendous support to Mr. Konishi and other volunteers. We clearly saw their commitment to regional events, too. This effort is a great example of achieving something bigger than what an individual company can do. One of the best benefits that GALA members can enjoy is to collaborate to achieve more results. I hope you will share a small idea or some time and resources with GALA. Who knows? You may be a part of a big industry initiative one day. As former GALA Board member Daniel Carter said, “if you want to benefit from the association, you have to get involved.”
Speaking of getting involved, the GALA Board elections are coming up. We look forward to seeing some new members stepping up and becoming more involved.
For the GALA Board,
Aki Ito
GALA Board Chair