Takeaways & Trends: What we learned at LocWorld41 Silicon Valley
ULG leadership including Kristen Giovanis, CEO; Nic McMahon, COO and Kristin Gutierrez, Senior Global Strategic Account Manager were onsite for LocWorld41 in Silicon Valley early November as attendees and speakers to connect with industry peers and share ideas.
While the host-site and tech-capital was certainly reflected in the groundbreaking sessions on innovation and globalization excellence, our biggest takeaway was surprisingly to be less technology obsessed – here’s what we learned at LocWorld41 Silicon Valley:
Key Takeaway: For successful localization, follow the money and be human.
As with every LocWorld event, the curated lineup of keynote speakers and session presenters challenged the status quo of localization and brought fresh perspectives that inspired.
Notably, Mary Anne Henselmann from ADP in her presentation on “Balancing Demands” and Anna Schlegel of NetApp in the session “How to Tie Globalization Strategy into Enterprise Wide Corporate Governance” talked about the importance of expanding globally where there is an ROI to be made. In short: follow the money - find out what your customers want and make them part of the globalization process.
Similarly, it’s important to remember that people are the heart of the solution. This industry is hyper-focused on the newest technology, but humanity is the common denominator across every global market. Instead of pouring every ounce of energy only into tech development, workflows and enhanced processes, be human. Connecting with people will make you better, and at the end of the day, the people in this industry will continue to drive its success.
Trend Outlook: Companies can achieve content contentment with a more sustainable approach
Content and plastic have a lot in common.
Namely, both of these things can be responsible for a lot of waste. The process of implementing a company-wide content localization program can incur unnecessary over-spending and result in the duplicated-manufacturing of content pieces if a sustainable approach is not taken.
This idea of content transformation in the industry was an ongoing theme and a hot topic at LocWorld41. For example, when the Documentation Department of a global software company moved to localize its English documents for the first time, it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This was in part due to several authors working separately and inconsistently on the same materials. There was a huge opportunity for reuse and cost reduction by employing writing tools and streamlining the authoring process.
Today, as silos are increasingly broken down across an organization, content needs to be dynamic and reusable. No longer can organizations work independently from one another and we’re seeing company-wide content cataloged to allow for consistent terminology, tagging and searchability by all departments.
Moving forward, the trend toward a “greener” content localization process will continue to grow as companies recognize there is opportunity to reduce, reuse and recycle content with the proper tools.
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