GALA Blog

Deadline: Wednesday, 9 November 2011

We are pleased to announce the 2012 Association of Language Companies (ALC) Annual Conference in New Orleans! This year’s theme is Building Business in the Big Easy: Growth Strategies for Success and we are planning for another outstanding event! The conference will be held at the Ritz Carlton in New Orleans from May 17–19, 2012.

The ALC conference planning task force is seeking speakers and breakout session leaders who are ready to engage, enlighten and inspire our 200+ attendees. Given our conference theme, ALC is seeking presenters from a wide variety of backgrounds to help us reach our goal of providing educational topics that provide Growth Strategies for Success. We are looking for those who have a clear level of expertise in their chosen topics so as to facilitate the adoption of new knowledge, skills and practical techniques which attendees can immediately apply to build their business.

If you are a speaker who has insight and experience that would be of interest to our membership, we encourage you to apply to be one of the ALC 2012 Conference speakers today!

Session Format and Length
For the 2012 Conference, we will have the following session types:

• Lecture / Workshop = 60 minutes
• Panel = 60 or 75 minutes

Most breakout sessions will be the “lecture / workshop” format. That said, if you believe you would make a valuable panel member on a given topic, let us know. We are open to hearing your ideas!

Attendee Profile

The ALC conference attendees tend primarily to be small business owners or those at the management level in larger companies. Some profile statistics include:

• United States based = 75%ƒƒ
• Internationally based = 25%ƒƒ
• 7–10 years in business = 40%ƒƒ
• 11–20 years in business = 40%ƒƒ
• $1m–$5m in revenue = 70%ƒƒ
• Over $5m in revenue = 20%ƒƒ
• 3–20 employees = 60%ƒƒ
• 25–50 employees = 20%ƒƒ

Member-Requested Speaking Topics
for 2012 Conference

Based on recent surveys of our global membership and feedback from past conference attendees, we are seeking speakers for the following topic areas for the 2012 conference. If you have a presentation that applies to these topics, or have other ideas not mentioned below, we would love to hear from you!

Business Management

• Executive Leadership Skills
• Streamlining Operations / Reorganizations
• Creating a Business Plan / Budget
• Human Resources—recruiting, hiring, training, management, etc.
• Intellectual Property Management
• Managing Family Business Dynamics
• Succession Planning and Exit Strategies
• Handling Independent Contractor Issues

Business Growth Strategies

• Sales Skills
• Marketing Techniques
• Hiring / Managing Sales Personnel
• Sourcing Freelance Personnel
• Partnering in the Marketplace
• Service Line Extensions—telephone, translation, interpreting,
  video, etc.
• Harnessing the Potential of Social Media

Cutting Edge Technologies in Language
Services

• Web-based Tools for Language Service Providers
• Project Management Tools & Techniques
• Machine Translation

Future of Language Services— Trends
and Changes on the Horizon

• Latest Trends in Globalization and Localization
• Latest Trends in Interpreting Services
• Latest Trends in Translation Services

Click here for a download of the Proposal Submission Form.