February 2010 Archives

March 11, 11:00 am ET

Conversations with users of technologies and services for content globalization inevitably include a wistful remark like, "If only we could convince our executives..."

Often it's a matter of presenting a business case that's a light bulb (top line impact) or a gut punch (bottom line impact), rather than a death-march through headcount figures.

Example: buyers had pitched the need as a replacement for two homegrown "quasi-multilingual" web content management systems. In reality, the true business problem was revenue leakage from failure to engage subscribers and ensure recurring revenues through renewals and upsells to higher-value subscription programs.

If you recognize the value of enhanced multilingual capabilities but need help selling an investment to executives, join us on March 11 for a discussion with Andrew Thomas, Global Information Management Evangelist at SDL. The focus is on translation technology as a core component of global content value chains. We'll use Gilbane’s research on content globalization adoption to lay out a framework for presenting compelling arguments for investment in translation management technologies. Our goal is to help you sell the value proposition and close the deal for funding, not just convince management that translation technology is important.

In this webinar, we're trying a new format featuring a business case makeover. Using a before-and-after format, we'll share approaches to selling the value to executives who thought they didn’t care.

Registration is open. Sponsored by SDL.

We're featuring multlingual content strategies, practices, and technologies in four sessions on the San Franciso program:

• Reaching Global Audiences: Case Studies in Multilingual Multisite Web Content Management
• Breaking Out of the Silo: Improving Global Content Value Chains by Collaborating Across Departments
• Content Metrics: Tools for Measuring ROI in Global Content Infrastructures
• Eliminating the Multilingual Multiplier: Addressing the Cost of Producing Formatted Content in Multiple Languages

These topics are among the hot spots on Gilbane's 2010 Content Globalization Heat Map, which identifies a set of key investments that companies can make today to advance their content globalization practices and overcome language afterthought syndrome. (See this presentation for more information on these concepts.)

We're in the process of populating the sessions with top-notch speakers. Check the Gilbane San Francisco conference site for updates. Twitter is #gilbanesf.

Apple recently unveiled its new iPad device with a flourish of global PR. iPads will go on sale in the U.S. around the end of March this year, and in other countries in the following months. Press and analysts have had a field day praising and condemning the iPad's capabilities and features, predicting (depending on who you listen to) that the device will be either a terrible flop or another runaway success for Apple.

My analysis predicts that Apple will sell millions of units of its new "universal media device," as analyst Ned May of Outsell Inc. describes it, but Apple's success is not my subject today. Instead, it's a warning: People who generate content for global markets need to know how the iPad might make their work more difficult.

The problem is caused by a technical gap the new iPad shares with its older siblings, the iPhone and the iPod touch. None of them can use Adobe Flash. (For more on Apple's deliberate omission of Flash and its consequences, see this New York Times story and this one.)

Thousands of global businesses use Flash movies with captions or voiceover narration as quick, relatively low-cost ways to present marketing videos and user guides over the Web to multilingual audiences. For these businesses and the agencies that work with them, the Flash gap is a growing problem. Instead of Flash movies, millions of iPhone and iPod Touch users see blank white spaces. The iPad boasts a larger screen, with display capabilities that will be attractive for business tasks. But all those millions of Flash animations and interviews and guides and other videos will be invisible. Just blank white spaces, no matter what language you speak. That is the Flash gap, which the iPad will make worse.

The alternative is to deliver videos using HTML5. But not all web browsers work with HTML5. Neither do all devices, especially mobile devices. This means Web video providers need to research what specific devices their target audiences use, and what video technology those devices will support.

So if you provide multilingual video content, you have one more detail to pay attention to when you plan your schedules and budget.