With so much of our news focused on the Boston conference the last couple of weeks, you might have missed the publication of a new case study and a new white paper. Both are by Senior Analyst Leonor Ciarlone, and as usual, both are free. The case study is “The Global Customer Experience: Sun Microsystems’ Vision for the Participation Age”, and is the topic of today’s webinar. The white paper is “Eliminating the Fear Factor: Creating a Culture of Compliance“, and a recording of the webinar covering this is available here.
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It has been interesting to note that even inside the US, more and more languages start appearing in various services. Spanish is the obvious example, but at the Gilbane Boston conference we heard that e.g. a New England healthcare provider needs to think about providing information in Vietnamese and in Russian. The old saying “You can always buy in your own language, but you must sell in your customer’s language” still holds true.
Although English has become the universal second language, people still feel more comfortable dealing in their own native language. Maybe the next generation will be different (although I guess that has always been the expectation of the previous generation) and will communicate mainly with smileys – but I believe that languages will not go away.
One could assume that in the European Union with its plethora of official languages there would be a lot of language tools available. Well, there is e.g. Eurodicautom, a multilingual and searchable term bank which includes about 5.5 million entries in 48 subject fields. It continues to be available, but it is currently not updated, as it is being moved into a new database – and the latest news about it are from 2003. So one can only hope that the migration will be completed soon and the updating can continue, as new words appear in languages continuously. Just think about “truthiness”, which was chosen as Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2006.
There are several other multilingual general and industry-specific dictionaries available in the web, such as the European multilingual environmental glossary at http://glossary.eea.europa.eu/EEAGlossary/. Another example is the Microsoft multilingual terminology at http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/MILSGlossary.mspx. Googling e.g. with “multilingual glossaries” or “multilingual dictionaries” brings a lot of hits to various resources.
The thing is, multilingual content management and multilingual searches start from good multilingual terminology. There will be a lot of work needed in that area, both in general and in industry- or even in company-specific dictionaries. I will follow up on this topic later.
For Immediate Release:
LISA Forum and CM Pros to Co-Locate with 2007 Gilbane Conferences on Content Management Technologies
12/11/06
Gilbane Conferences Considered Premiere Industry Events for Obtaining Content Management Advice
Contacts:
Welz & Weisel Communications
Evan Weisel, 703-218-3555
Cell: 703-628-5754
evan@w2comm.com
Jeffrey V. Arcuri
Lighthouse Seminars
508-759-8180
jeff@lighthouseseminars.com
Boston MA, December 11, 2006. The Gilbane Group and Lighthouse Seminars today announced that the Gilbane Conference series is extending its reach into complementary technologies in 2007 with the co-location of both the LISA Forum and the CM Pros Summit. Having established itself as the industry’s top forum for bringing together industry experts, vendors and end users to share new content management technologies and real-world experiences, the addition of these new events to the Gilbane Conferences will help further educate attendees and drive business success.
LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association) is one of the leading international associations for globalization professionals and organizations doing business around the world. It has distilled the right ways and wrong ways of supporting international customers, products and services over the last fifteen years from more than 500 corporate members, public & private institutions, government ministries and trade organizations. CM Pros (Content Management Professionals Association) is the worldwide organization for people who want to learn more about content management from other CM professionals.
“Our partnership with Gilbane illustrates the structural link between globalization services and managing content globally,” said Michael Anobile, Managing Director of LISA. “Users of globalization tools, technologies and standards now have a single point of reference for the expertise required to develop, sell and support products, customers and information services worldwide.”
In its three years since inception, the Gilbane Conferences (Boston, Washington DC and San Francisco) have rapidly gained a reputation for being the premiere content management events to attend due to the focus of providing neutral and educational information to attendees. The events will offer attendees a chance to learn about Web content management, enterprise content management, collaboration, enterprise wikis & blogs, globalization & localization, enterprise search & search based applications, enterprise digital rights management, and automated publishing.
“Because we are strictly neutral with regard to vendors, analysts, enterprises, and consultants, we have been able to maintain a constant dialog with each group, all of whom are our customers, and all of whom we have learned from,” said Frank Gilbane, Conference Chair. “Our conference content is carefully designed by our team of consultants and analysts to ensure the focus is on what you need to know to successfully plan and implement content technology solutions. Partnering with LISA and CM Pros only increases the value we offer attendees in providing actionable information that attendees can implement immediately.”
For more information on the 2007 Gilbane Conferences, visit:
About Gilbane Group, Inc.
The Gilbane Group, Inc. serves the content technology community with publications, conferences and consulting services. The Gilbane Group, Inc. also administers the Content Technology Works program disseminating best practices with partners Software AG (TECdax:SOW), Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW), Artesia Digital Media, a Division of Open Text, Astoria Software, ClearStory Systems (OTCBB:INSS), Context Media (Oracle, NASDAQ:ORCL), Convera (NASDAQ:CNVR), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Idiom, Mark Logic, omtool (NASDAQ:OMTL), Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ:OTEX), SDL International (London Stock Exchange:SDL), Vasont Systems, Vignette (NASDAQ:VGN), and WebSideStory (NASDAQ:WSSI). https://gilbane.com
About Lighthouse Seminars
Lighthouse Seminars’ events cover information technologies and “content technologies” in particular. These include content management of all types, digital asset management, document management, web content management, enterprise portals, enterprise search, web and multi-channel publishing, electronic forms, authoring, content and information integration, information architecture, and e-catalogs. http://www.lighthouseseminars.com
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Underscoring the increasing interest in globalization and localization among our audience of content and web professionals are three items this week. Today we announced that the the LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association) Forum will co-locate with the Gilbane conferences starting with Gilbane San Francisco April 10- 12, 2007. Last Friday, Kaija Poysti, introduced herself as our new guest blogger covering translation and localization issues (in her post, she doesn’t actually propose it, but she does point us to some reasons why we should just all speak Finnish). And, this coming Wednesday, we co-host a case-study webinar on how Sun has built a a global customer experience with their online content and branding.
I am starting to blog here on mainly globalization and localization, and the many issues they bring to end users and organizations. To give you an idea about what my views and thoughts are based on, here is a short background:
As a native Finnish speaker I realized early on why languages do matter – very few people outside Finland speak any Finnish, despite its many quaint characteristics, such as 16 cases formed by adding endings to nouns. In addition, I studied operations research and systems analysis at the Helsinki University of Technology, which gave me a tendency to look at everything as processes which can be optimized.
For 14 years, I had a localization service company, Trantex, which translated a lot of software and documentation for major sw providers, such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, etc., and also did technical writing and training. In 1997 we sold the company to L&H and I moved to Boston, where I later became a consultant to Finnish high-tech companies entering the US market.
After all the years I spent in the localization world, I have kept following the industry, as I think there are very interesting developments and challenges ahead. In 1985 a translation customer told me that I should start looking for a new job, as all computer users will want to use only English software. Since then, the number of languages into which companies have to translate their materials has at least tripled. With the web and now with wikis and blogs, information can be published instantly 24/7 all over the world, and much of it is or needs to be in languages other than English. After all, only 5% of the world’s population are native English speakers (354 million according to Wikipedia).
I welcome comments and discussion – though preferably in English :0).
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced the immediate availability of the Adobe Acrobat Connect software product line for communicating and collaborating instantly through real-time, interactive web conferencing. The Acrobat Connect product line addresses online collaboration needs from casual to intensive web conferencing users. The entry-level Acrobat Connect hosted service provides users with essential collaboration tools, such as screen sharing, whiteboarding, chat, video conferencing, and audio conferencingall for unlimited usage for up to 15 participants for one low monthly fee. Additionally, with one-button “Start Meeting” access from Acrobat 8 and Adobe Reader 8 software, users can launch Acrobat Connect directly from a document to start collaborating immediately. The entire Acrobat family consists of Acrobat 8 Professional, Acrobat 8 Standard, Acrobat 8 Elements, Acrobat 3D Version 8, Acrobat Connect, and Acrobat Connect Professional. The Acrobat Connect hosted service is currently available as a free trial version through the end of the current calendar year. The commercial release of Acrobat Connect, initially available in English, is expected to be available in January 2007 for a subscription price of US$39 per month, or US$395 per year per personal meeting room. Acrobat Connect Professional is available in English, French, German, Japanese, and Korean, starting at US$15,000 depending on configuration, and is licensed on a named user, as well as concurrent port basis. Existing licensed customers of the Macromedia Breeze solution with up-to-date maintenance plans may be eligible for updates to Acrobat Connect Professional and new versions of the Adobe Connect servers. Adobe also released Reader 8, which features a new, streamlined interface with user customizable toolbars. Adobe Acrobat Professional users can now enable Adobe Reader users to fill and submit forms, save data and digitally sign documents. Adobe Reader 8 also has graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration, which boosts performance when viewing graphics-intense PDF files, such as 3D content. A free trial version of Acrobat Connect Professional is available at http://www.adobe.com/go/tryconnectpro, http://www.adobe.com/go/getreader/
I had the pleasure of moderating the Content Globalization Workflows session at last week’s Gilbane Boston conference. Although we were the last session on the last day, the room was filled with interactive participants with very specific issues and questions. The underlying theme? The act of translation is not the “stress-buster” for globalization projects. It’s the process. Managing it, understanding it, aligning it, integrating it — you name it. Globalization has process-centric red flags from the get-go.
The good news is that globalization as a recognized enterprise business practice continues to gain traction. In fact, our audience cited “global, simultaneous product shipments” as one of the most distinct and well-understood business drivers at the executive and cross-departmental levels. Even better, there are achievable, significant cost savings to be had. The description of a first-year, $2.4 million savings realized by GE Healthcare was impressive, to say the least. Many thanks to Jeanette Eichholz, a Leader in the Global Ultrasound User Documentation group, for sharing her story.
The Gilbane Group is working to keep the subject of globalization in the spotlight as a key issue for 2007 to help organizations understand that cost savings is actually only the cusp of the benefits. Rapid market reach, consistent brand management, and increased customer satisfaction are equally viable, and more importantly, quantifiable.
To that end, join us for our December 13th webinar, “How Sun Takes Brands and Solutions to the Global Marketplace.” Sponsored by Interwoven and SDL International, understanding Sun’s success factors will be a valuable learning experience for any organization with globalization on the agenda.
Date: 13th December, 2006
Time: 8:30 Pacific, 11:30 Eastern, 16:30 GMT, 17:30 Central Europe
Duration: 1 hour
Register here.
The final results of the survey are at: https://gilbane.com/gilbaneboston_keynote_survey.html. We really appreciate the input from all of you who participated. The winner of the drawing for a free conference pass to a future Gilbane Conference has been notified, so if you contributed, check your email. We’ll announce the winner once we receive their permission.
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