An In-Depth Unconference Report
RI am Renato Beninatto.
MAnd I’m Michael Stevens.
RToday, we’re going to talk about unconferences, in general, and especially in the language industry.
MSo, we are talking about conferences?
RNo, “un-conferences.’
MUnconferences, okay, because conferences are expensive, they take a long time to get to, it’s hard to convince managers for the budget, often.
RThe idea of the unconference was actually born from that business problem that you describe. It’s an alternative to the traditional conference where you have to have a structured agenda, you have keynote speakers and you have coffee breaks; you have call for papers, you have sponsors, exhibitors, all that stuff.
MAnd you get to see people from a distance and the keynotes usually come in and leave right after they talk so you don’t even… maybe you get their LinkedIn or something, who knows.
RAbsolutely. So, unconferences started late in the ‘90s with the IT people. I think that the first unconference was actually around XML development.
MAnd so for this episode we’ve interviewed some people who have taken this concept that was outside the localization industry and they’ve made it relevant to people who know about languages.
RAnd we started with Teresa Marshall. And we will let her introduce herself.
TMI’m senior director of localization at Salesforce. I’m responsible for product localization which means pretty much everything except for marketing. I have a couple of roles within Salesforce, so I own localization but I’m also the product owner for the globalization team. So, I own internationalization infrastructure. That’s relatively new, we’re sort of reviving that effort which is really exciting.
Apart from that I’m also on the board of Women in Localization.
MSOkay, so you have that role. You’ve done some teaching.
TMI’ve done some teaching. I taught a course called “localization as a profession” at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, for about four years, I think.
RBWhere does this unconference idea come from?
TMI have to admit that it was not my idea. But, you have to have the ability to pick up good ideas when they fit what you want to do.
When I joined Salesforce, just before I joined them, my manager Shawna Wolverton got together with Ultan O’Brien and had this idea that part of what’s really fun about conferences, whether it’s Localization World or whether it’s a Salesforce big Dreamforce event, or something like that, part of the fun is always that networking ability, the time that you have as you grab a cup of coffee, or you head to dinner, or you end up in the bar after the conference and then most of the interesting conversations typically happen from there. So, they were looking for a format to really focus those conversations.
They did the first unconference, I think in 2008, and then when I joined we were thinking about trying to do that again but both my manager had moved on and Ultan, I think, had moved to Ireland again, so it was a little bit harder. But, we had a great space because we have office space available and so we just tried it again. The idea is really that you have… I think the most organization that goes into that is finding that space and getting people to show up but there’s no need to prepare for it, there’s no need to find speakers or put out a call for papers. You really have to be, I guess, good at just sort of winging it and that really took off. And we’ve done one very year since I started and for five years we’ve done an unconference track at LocWorld as well.
RBWhat during this several years that you’ve been doing this at venues and events, what are some of the recurring topics and some of the weird topics that come up in this conversation.
TMIt really depends where it is, I have to say, and not so much in terms of the venue but like you said, who’s in the audience. So, a unconference in Asia is completely different from a unconference in Silicon Valley or even the ones that we had in Europe with LocWorld, what we generally see is it’s definitely buzzword-centric. So, whatever is going on in the industry that year is definitely something that comes up. So, when the industry is talking about IoT and what that means for localization, then that comes up. And it comes up in different variations. It’s either “oh, I’ve been tasked with something related to that” or it’s somebody who says “I keep hearing that term and I don’t know what it is”. So, it’s actually a great form for people to interact very…
RBIoT is internet of things… you’re talking a buzzword.
TMThis is exactly true. I actually meant buzzwords in a good way, in what is moving the minds of the industry. One of my favorite unconference sessions was, I think, at LocWorld in Seattle and I think it was one of the first ones we did in combination with LocWorld. And one of the later ones in the day. And, I think you were in the room; there were a number of people in the room with long years of experience; they had been round the block not just once but a couple of times and really had seen the industry from different angles, had worked on the vendor side, on the client side, had moved through a number of Silicon Valley companies and big corporations and smaller companies and everything. So, I think we had about 30 people in the room.
And, when we do the unconference at LocWorld we don’t have the luxury of setting an agenda at the beginning of the day but we sort of set it at the beginning of that session. It’s always a little chaotic but that’s part of the fun, right? So, we’re going around the room – and I think there were many other topics – but somebody said “you know what, I’m new to this industry and I don’t really know what I don’t know”. And it was this young guy who was in a sales position for, I think, an LSP and it sort of sparked this sharing of information across this group of 30 people and with somebody like you who has a lot of experience and then other people who were just starting out.
And I can remember just his eyes going wide and I think he wanted to record it, probably, because there was so much information in that. What I liked about it and why it was one of my favorite sessions is it was so easy for this newbie in the industry to have an informal conversation with you and with a number of people…
Going back to your earlier question of the differences, I saw a difference in venue. So, typically, when we do it at Salesforce we do it down the peninsula in Silicon Valley close to Silicon Valley. Last year it was in San Francisco, so the audience was made up of a larger diversity in terms of roles; and that was really interesting and that takes the entire day or entire session into a slightly different topic. So, if you have, let’s say, a bunch of program managers in the room and they want to talk about MT, it’s a completely different conversation than if you have a bunch of engineers in the room and they want to talk about MT. It makes it really interesting. It’s also a little bit tiring because you have to be so on your feet that you can pick up where the conversation is going.
MSIt sounds like there’s a lot of variance between whether it’s at LocWorld or whether it’s independently hosted, who actually shows up, you’re setting the agenda together, what are the consistent things, you mentioned some people who show up consistently, what are some other consistent themes?
TMI think a couple of things that are just principles of the unconference…
Typically when we do the unconference it’s a standalone. We dedicate about an hour to finding the topics and we write them all down; it’s very democratic process; we invite them to vote on the individual topics and then we wrangle the number of topics that have the highest votes into an agenda. Quite often we have two or three different tracks that we run simultaneously.
MSUsually about how many people, what’s the audience variance on that?
TMOver the years anywhere between 50 and 120. 120 was the biggest one we did and that’s almost at a point where it’s so big that it’s hard to manage and you lose that very casual momentum that drives that conversation. So, 50 is a really good number; that gives people a lot of topics to choose from; that’s why we have a number of tracks; and it doesn’t disrupt the conversation too much when somebody says “hey this is not for me I’m out of here”.
MSThey can probably take some of the things they learned in a session and go deeper with it in some…
TMYes and that happens quite often that something from the keynote will come in and be part of a topic that gets picked up for one of the sessions.
RBI remember in London the lead sponsor was Capita, they had new leadership.
TMThat was an awesome unconference.
RBThat was an awesome unconference because we had a lot of leaders, CEOs and executives from LSPs in the room and Capita was coming with this concept of, every once in a while, every two years, somebody comes with this great idea that we need to change the pricing model from per word to something that nobody knows what it is. And, this guy who came from outside the industry had this novel idea that I heard for the first time in 1992, to charge by the hour and then have set margin of… it would be like a 20% management fee on top of the cost for the project. And I think it was a very lively discussion. And it depends on the people that are in the room and…
MSYou start talking about pay and it gets very lively.
TMLondon was a great unconference altogether. I think the other session at London all of a sudden dissolved into a conversation about poor people in India having to sell their kidneys and how crowdsourcing within the localization industry was just the same practice. And it sometimes gets really touchy. So, I only had two or three where I was thinking “how do I stop this if it actually trends into this revolt or aggressive kind of violent behavior.” Thankfully that never really happens.
RBTalking about kidneys and crowdsourcing—that files under weird!
TMOh yes, absolutely. That was definitely… that was definitely one of the weirder ones.
I just remember that was so passionate. I mean, money typically gets tempers a little bit high but that particular year, and I think this is about 2012, maybe, so crowdsourcing at that point had been around for a while and it was funny that it was still such a passionate topic. It’s definitely one that I’ve seen change over the years where it used to be not at all embraced and now when it comes up as a topic it’s more like “how do I do it?” It’s not like “oh, this sucks and we shouldn’t be doing it” it’s more like “how do I get in on that”. And that makes it really interesting because you can see over the years different topics. So, MT is always part of it. Pricing is one that we actually try to stay away from. But when it comes up we’re not saying no.
OPMy name is Alex, my full name is a little more interesting, it’s Oleksandr Pysaryuk. I come from Ukraine and right now I live in Canada. I am the manager of Localization at a Toronto-based company called Achievers. I have been with achievers for the past three and a half years. Before that I was doing localization at Blackberry for four years. With colleagues from Blackberry, I co-organize the Toronto Unconference, it’s the Canadian addition of the one that’s run by Teresa Marshall in the US.
RBWhat are the most recurring topics that you get and is there anything out of the norm or something weird that has come up in your unconferences?
OPWe do get a variety of topics. It depends on who shows up for the unconference. Since we are in Toronto we had attendees from Quebec, various translation bureaux, it’s Canada, Francophones, so there were topics about translation into French from French, bilingualism, that is what comes up in Canada. Otherwise, something that’s interesting is always coming up. for example, educating the customer on the localization subject or career paths in localization. This year we had graduates and younger people at the unconference, fresh graduates, who are looking to get into localization or are working and it’s their first job, so careers in localization and paths was a hot topic.
MPMy name is Mirko Plitt; I’m the founder of Modulo Language Automation in Switzerland and I’ve organized or co-organized unconferences. The first one in Switzerland; and then a second one in Munich, Germany; and we’re about to have one at the end of June, again, in Germany.
I really tried to do it professionally, thinking we are in Switzerland and I have to do something really proper and organized and we got 100 people in some federal agency here in Switzerland so very great facilities and great attendance and I think it was really more a professional event than unconferences typically are which has advantages and disadvantages. But, I think, at the time it was really I saw an opportunity or need for something in Switzerland, specifically, with its multilingual language situation and there is not a lot of exchange between the difference actors in Switzerland across the different linguistic regions, which is interesting you know—events for German speaking translators and events for French speaking and probably Italian speaking but not so much for everyone all together.
RBAnd was that the idea, to do one for all three major languages in Switzerland? And were you able to make that happen?
MPYes, the idea for me was really to bring together everyone who was involved with translation, independently from their occupation, you know, independently from the fact that they’re translators or, maybe, translation managers in LSPs or maybe in companies or even federal translation departments because you have them in Switzerland; or whether they’re in German speaking, French speaking or Italian speaking Switzerland. And it was really quite novel from that point of view and that’s why it drew so many different people. But, it was a great event; it was a lot of work, though, as well. So, yes, that was the Swiss one. For the German one the history was a little bit different. It was the initiative by the other organizers who had contributed previously to organizing ones in Dublin and wanted to do a similar thing in Germany. And, basically, they just asked me if I wanted to help out, so I did.
RBAnd what were the topics that came up for discussion when you set up the meeting.
MPThe Swiss one. Payment was a very important topic for people. You know, I know it sounds quite mundane but given the situation of Switzerland and currency exchange because Switzerland, of course, is not part of the Euro market, so currency exchange rates and in general the level of payment and the ability of companies or the tendency of companies to more and more outsource outside Switzerland is something that is a common issue and then, also, payments…
RBIt sounds so weird to me that a conference in Switzerland would talk about money; I don’t see the connection between the two! How about what other topics would come up, what topics are interesting for that part of Europe in addition to payment?
MPYes, there was a lot; at the time certainly machine translation was a hot topic. It was a couple of years ago, already; I think people have generally become a bit more, say, the hype is a little bit behind us and people have a better understanding of how real the threat for them, individually, is or not. But, at the time it was a quite hot and conflictual topic, machine translation. And then, generally, technology for instance, how to manage technology and so on, some of the more traditional practice questions. And that was great for me to discover how people have been working successfully for, sometimes, decades in big organizations, big companies, big federal offices here who do a lot of translation because for legal reasons they have to; and it’s not like they hadn’t developed their own good practices. In the industry where I was coming from we often didn’t really know what they were doing so that was pretty good exchange as well. I think those were probably the most prominent topics, as far as I recall.
TMThere’s really just two principles with an unconference. One is that we don’t want that divide in the industry so you’re not allowed to sell. You can’t come in and say “hey, here is your problem I want to talk about, and by the way I solved it so you should all come buy my service”. And at the same time you can’t solicit services either. You can’t go in “hey, I’m company X and I’m looking for a new vendor, come…”
MSYou can’t run your RFP or RFI through the unconference.
TMWe want it to be a really open discussion and free flow without having some of it constrained. I think one of the weirder ones was where both Scott and I at the same time got up to flank one particular person of a technology provider and basically sort of whispered, “if you do that again we’re going to make you leave” which is kind of weird.