Recent Posts View All

Blog - MT never tasted so good

MT never tasted so good

posted 2007-06-16 01:42:13
by Clove Lynch

It's taken me a week to come back down to earth from the TAUS Executive Forum in San Francisco. Great people, great presentations, great location, and as always...great food.

Jaap van der Meer positions these gatherings as quality-focused, limiting attendance to an intimate size, choosing high-end resorts and boutique hotels as venues, eschewing advertising and product placement. The couple that I've been to have been all that. I've returned more knowledgeable, better connected and several pounds heavier.

The forum in SF was dedicated to MT implementation case studies focused on customer support applications. That was the headliner, but for me the food came close to stealing the show. I'll explain...

The day before the Forum there was a follow-up meeting on the industry co-op discussions (see "A historic moment in the translation industry"). For some reason that day events conspired against me, and between the travel and general craziness I missed lunch. Normally this is fine -- even a good thing -- but mind and body were in overdrive that day, calories were being burned, and by 2pm I was famished. While we discussed business models, technology and intellectual property rights, my thoughts kept turning to the Forum dinner, still a few hours away that evening.

When it was finally time for dinner, I had gone into inanition and was getting primordial -- craving salt, fat, carbohydrates. Sitting down with colleagues and new acquaintances was wonderful, but when the meal came it was like being re-born. I inhaled an entire basket of warm sourdough rolls and a crisp lettuce salad. Then a filet mignon in a light shallot and red wine reduction appeared, which I dispatched in about a minute like a starving beast, probably to the shock and horror of others at my table.

Fully recovered the next morning, I got off to the right start with a power breakfast of flaky, warm pastry, fresh fruit and black coffee. The day was full of promise. The implementation case studies by Symantec, Intel, Cisco and Computer Associates were insightful and well-delivered. But throughout the day it was hard to resist the treats at the back of the room. The lunch buffet tables groaned under the weight of thick-sliced cold cuts, fresh pasta salads and an assortment of fine cheeses.

There are camps where people go to lose weight. This was sort of the opposite of that. Contemplate automation solutions and experiences while enjoying endless opportunities to try yet another gourmet pastry with coffee. As soon as the whipped-cream-and-glazed-fruit-covered cupcakes were gone, trays of freshly-baked brownies were brought in, and were eaten. It was cruel, and yet so wonderful.

By the time Andrew Thomas and I got up to speak about upcoming MT integration points in WorldServer, it was deep in the afternoon and the audience had entered a hypometabolic state, like hibernating animals. We managed to shock some awake by suggesting that MT hits were really just like fuzzy matches -- and that assigning arbitrary scores to them was fine, because after all it comes down to the same level of effort to edit MT output as fuzzy matches. If we had come out with that at 10 in the morning we might have been pelted with danish and fruit. But as it was we were saved by the food coma. Only a couple of people appeared skeptical and asked questions.

If there is life after death for localization professionals, you would want it to be like this -- sitting around with a cross section of the best in the business, discussing and debating technology implementation themes while dining like royalty. Just thinking of the upcoming meetings in Belfast and Beijing makes me salivate like Pavlov's dogs.

So bring your case studies, your technology roadmaps and your appetites -- these conferences are going to be good!

Share:

Back to the Blog

Back to Top