GALA Blog

He is known as ‘the wizard of local’ and as one of the few true Internet innovators. And he will speak at GALA’s first ever conference this September 14 – 16. Who is he? Craig Newmark, the founder and chairman of Craigslist, one of the top ten Interent companies in the world. At “GALA 2009: The Language of Business. The Business of Language.” he will discuss the future of online community and commerce.

Newmark started Craigslist in his bedroom as a simple email exchange service, and now the site attracts 10+billion page views per month and 35 million visitors from more than 550 cities and 55 countries per month. In 2008, Newmark was named one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web by BusinessWeek magazine.

Craigslist is now the world’s largest centralized network for worldwide urban and regional communities featuring classified advertisements with discussion boards. Its success is built on Newmark’s pledge to serve the needs of users. Newmark believes the secret to Craigslist’s success is listening hard, following through and doing what people need the site to do. In fact, he still works as a customer service representative for the company, making sure that the users of the site are always put first.

GALA 2009 will be held 14 – 16 September 2009 at the J.W. Marriott in Cancun, Mexico and will provide GALA members and industry professionals with language technology education, training and networking opportunities unparalleled in the localization and translation industry.

GALA 2009 attendees will hear Newmark’s secrets for effective internet marketing and customer service. “We are committed to creating a great meeting with many educational opportunities for localization and translation professionals,” said Jim Hollan, executive director of GALA. “Craig Newmark will offer invaluable insight that will help participants think out of the box in their own marketing and customer service activities. At the very least I am interested in the experiences and opinions of someone who has actually done it. I think we all can learn a lot from the Craigslist experience.”

For more information and to register for “GALA 2009: The Language of Business. The Business of Language.”, please visit www.language-of-business.org or www.gala-global.org/conference.

As translation and localization companies continue looking for ways to save money and cut costs in this uncertain economy, GALA has seen its webinar series become increasingly popular. These online meetings provide an efficient and cost effective way to gather groups of language technology and services professionals to have a discussion, watch a presentation or view a localization tool demonstration. An international trade association of language companies with members in over 40 countries, GALA hosts webinars as a way to offer localization training and tools demos on topics of interest for our members.

Launched in early 2008, the GALA Webinar Series gives attendees the opportunity to connect with localization and translation tools, technology, ideas and discussions in a sales-free environment right from their desktops. Sessions include demonstrations of industry tools as well as presentations by industry experts. Over 400 people participated in the 2008 webinar series and 94 percent of members who responded to a recent survey indicated their satisfaction with the program.

GALA webinars are open to all GALA members and are free for members and their clients to attend. Non-members are also welcome to attend for a small participation fee.

The 2009 GALA Webinar Series is already off to a great start. Over 100 people from 24 countries have joined us for trainings on PR and marketing, the Across Language Server, QuickTerm, website localization and the SDL LSP Partner Program. Registration numbers continue to increase for an upcoming May webinar on localization vendor management, and new webinars on globalization testing and open source/XML will soon be announced. Recordings of all webinars are available on the GALA website for members to download. Visit http://www.gala-global.org/GALA-event-2009_gala_webinar_series-144.html to view the 2009 GALA webinar calendar.

Do you or your colleagues have an interesting topic you’d like to speak to the GALA members about? We are still accepting proposals for the 2009 series. Expert webinars are hosted by GALA free-of-charge. Tools demos require a small sponsorship fee. GALA handles all registration, logistics and technical details. Please contact me at aephrem@gala-global.org if you are interested in proposing a webinar.