Newsletter - Events
tcworld 2007 Post-event Report
Matthias Caesar, GALA Board
2007 was GALA's second year of collaborating with tekom to produce the Localization Forum. The GALA-hosted localization track of the program included twenty-two sessions, hosted mostly by GALA members.
The Localization Forum was created to educate professionals on the most updated processes and technologies available in the language services and technology industry. The topics included successful collaboration among vendors, improving localization processes with open standards, and new tools for translation automation and machine translation.
The tcworld conference, hosted by tekom, the German society of technical communicators, is the largest event of its kind in the field of technical communication and information development in Europe. 1,950 people attended the conference this year for two days of presentations, workshops, forums and networking. The conference was accompanied by a trade fair, and GALA members had a large presence throughout. Forty member companies exhibited in total, including nine companies featured in the GALA group exhibit: Clay Tablet Technologies, Detroit Translation Bureau, Inc., Dtech Translation, Gamax Kft, MAGIT, MultiLingual Computing, Puretrans, Glees & Purer OEG, Techword and TLT Documents.
Following the conference, we polled GALA member participants to gauge the value of their experience at the conference (member speakers, exhibitors and attendees), and we received responses from 30 member companies. There was unanimous agreement that GALA's collaboration with tekom is beneficial to their companies. There was also general agreement (80%) that tekom's attendees were good prospects for their companies, though as one member noted, "Most attendees are technical writers or practitioners; [there didn't seem to be] many business people or managers."
Member respondents also generally agreed (75%) that the Localization Forum was prominent within the tekom conference, especially compared to last year. Speakers from the forum reported attendance of over 50 people to their respective sessions in many cases.
However, among the member exhibitors, enthusiasm was not as high concerning the exhibition area. 33% of respondents rated traffic on the exhibit floor as good or excellent, with the remaining 67% of respondents rating it as only fair or poor. Member exhibitors also found that their location within the exhibit layout was important to traffic, since those companies in the "back" hall received noticeably less visitors. A number of GALA members are enthusiastic about working together to collectively drive more traffic to member booths next year, possibly through activities, receptions and other incentives in and around the GALA booth.
As one member noted, "This is much more client-focused than other events ... a very good balance for GALA to continue to support." I'd like to thank all of our member volunteers who made GALA's collaboration with tekom possible this year, particularly the Program Committee members Don DePalma (Common Sense Advisory) and Thomas Deibjerg (TLT Documents). Stay tuned for next year's plans for how GALA will continue its efforts to bring visibility for our industry among this audience.
Matthias Caesar is a member of the GALA Board and Managing Director of Locatech GmbH.