3rd International EUATC Conference in Warsaw, 4-5 October 2007

Greater appreciation of enterprise and project management, and the power of good networking are among the main and undisputed benefits of the 3rd International EUATC conference in Warsaw. However, I am sure the attendees also appreciated the eclectic beauty of Warsaw, the quality of its hotels and restaurants and the great company that can be typically enjoyed at an EUATC event. Hopefully they got the contacts, ideas and information that will help them run their businesses.

The topic of the conference was "Managing Companies and Projects in the Language Industry" with a focus on management from the global and the local perspective. Project management as well as sales and marketing were the subject of the pre-conference workshops. The Project Management Workshop was given by Tony Jewtushenko of Product Innovator and Udo Leinhausser of Leinhausser Solutions. Doug Lawrence of Amicus TransTec and Peter Reynolds of Idiom Technologies gave the Sales and Marketing workshop.

Vodka was not one of the themes of the conference, however, there were excellent networking events at the conference and the Polish national drink played a key role in some - most notably at the Vodka Tasting Welcome Reception which took place in a restaurant located in the huge kitchen of a famous old European hotel (a venue called "At the Chefs'").

I never imagined anyone would describe themselves as a cheer-leader for the translation industry, particularly a 6'2" German, but that's what Jost Zetzsche of the International Writers' Group called himself as he started the conference off with a keynote outlining technology strategies for LSPs and current industry trends. In many ways he set the tone for the session with his provocative, informative, interesting and idea-packed presentation.

One of the goals of this conference was to show just how important technology is for the management of companies and projects nowadays and hence it was the implicit theme of many sessions and was summarized aptly in the last presentation of the conference. Wojtek Kosinski, Vice-President for Technology at Lionbridge took some of the themes Jost had enumerated at the start and looked at them in more detail. He gave a very candid overview of how his company had made decisions on whether to build or buy and looked at portals and project management technology in some detail. Technology panels usually consists of a number of people who have a vested interest in some particular software solution and use their membership on the panel to sell their technology or brand. The technology panel at this conference was called "The User Strikes Back" and it was completely different. The panellist represented the LSPs and freely voiced their concerns, discussed problems and issues they have with availability, pricing, standards and support they are getting from technology providers. Not surprisingly, this brilliant session provoked a very heated discussion and provided many interesting insights.

The target audience for the EUATC Annual Conference are the project managers, senior management and owners of European translation companies. Apart from management and technology, a big business issue which we are increasingly dealing with is mergers and acquisitions. "Happy Acquisition" was the title of the presentation from Veli-Pekka Elonen of SanomaWSOY and Outi Niemensivu of AAC Noodi Oy. SanomaWSOY has recently purchased Noodi and the two speakers gave a very honest and insightful account of why they wanted to merge and how they had managed the process.

There were many other business issues dealt with at the conference. Steven Kahaner of Juriscribe, a lawyer, spoke about how his translation company services the niche markets of America's legal sector. Bob Donaldson of McElroy Translation gave a presentation on best strategies for growing your business organically. Reinhard Schaler of the Localisation Research Centre discussed future industry trends and how specialist translation and localisation training and education is becoming crucial for our industry. Doug Lawrence of Amicus TransTec also gave a powerful presentation on Friday which elaborated on some sales strategies he outlined the previous day in his workshop.

Klaus Ahrend who is Head of Unit - External Translation at the European Commission's Directorate General for Translation - outlined the issues involved in supplying translation services to the EU and how the Commission is adapting to changes. Klaus also mentioned the growing importance of the new translation quality standard EN 15038 which is now being used as a practical quality benchmark for the industry. Previously, discussions of the EN 15038 standard at the EUATC events were aimed at promoting the standard and persuading translation companies to take it on board. But its increasing popularity requires a different approach these days and hence the panel presentation at the conference focused on the practical aspects of certification and experiences from both the translation company perspective and that of Bureau Veritas, the leading auditing and certification body for the standard.

Tomasz N?dzi of Skills delivered the second keynote presentation offering an in-depth analysis of project management. Tomasz started by defining what project management was is about and how the concept has developed over the years. He discussed key methodologies such as PRINCE 2, PMBOK, IPMA Competence Baseline and Project Cycle Management. He also talked about the famous "Project Management Triangle" - namely scope, time and budget as the triple constraints of any project. His way of looking at these was both innovative, universal and very pragmatic.

The project management theme was continued with the panel discussion. Tony and Udo, who had given the workshop on project management, were joined by Anja Sukkinen of AAC Noodi Oy. Many of the topics which had been raised during presentations from Tomasz N?dzi and various practical problems were discussed. The panel also looked at methodologies such as Scrum and the importance of a project monitoring system.

Last but not least, tasting some high quality Polish vodka was not the only social pursuit of the conference attendees. The EUATC Dinner was held on the first night at the Fukier Restaurant, located in the historic Old Town Square and is quite famous for the artistic opulence of its interiors. GALA was the drinks sponsor at the EUATC Dinner. MultiCorpora, who were one of the Platinum sponsors for the conference, additionally sponsored the Cheese and Wine Reception on the final evening. This was held before the conference dinner which took place in the Belvedere restaurant in Royal Baths Park famous for it's tasteful décor, excellent cuisine and great ambience. The guests were entertained by a well known medieval chamber music quartet from the Royal Castle in Krakow and the evening's entertainment provided a fitting end to a truly memorable conference.

Sponsors of the 3rd International EUATC Conference: MultiCorpora & Plunet - Platinum, Idiom Technologies - Gold, Alchemy Software & LTC - Silver, EuteCert and Bureau Veritas - Bronze Additionally, GALA was the Industry Networking Sponsor and sponsored the drinks at the EUATC Dinner, Alchemy sponsored lunch and MultiCorpora sponsored the Cheese&Wine Reception.

Monika Popiolek
MAart Agency
3rd EUATC Conference Co-Ordinator