August 2007

By Huiping ILER

I almost did not make it to this year’s ALC conference in Providence. Because it is a conference for owners of language services, I wondered if it would be wise to hang out with peers as opposed going to a conference that clients go to. But I am glad I went.

Had I not gone, I would have missed the yummy clam bake at the lovely Hyatt right on the water (the chefs made me do a crazy dance to thank the gods and it was captured on camera – Dah!) and I would have never realized we could cut our Chinese into English vendor cost by half (thanks to peer networking at the ALC).

I would have also missed the chance to meet Ben Sargent from Commonsense Advisory who was the technical editor for John Yunker’s book Web Globalization. What an information gold mine he is!

Five days spent in Providence was memorable: I was well fed (just ask all the lobsters and smoked salmon in my tummy); I shopped till I dropped (big malls in downtown Providence!); I made my first public speaking appearance at the ALC talking about applying metrics in managing language companies (I was walking in clouds after Marty Roberts from Linguistic Systems told me that my speech was “polished” and I was “excellent.”); I was informed about a type of client/business area that I did not know much before (Doug Strock from GLTaC in Michigan told me all about translating MSDS and working in the employee safety and regulatory compliance environment); I got translator referrals from Dave Nojaim at Languatek from East Aurora, New York; last but not least, I had a chance to hang out with colleagues in the same industry who understand what I do and would never ask if I translate into 30 different languages myself!

So I am marking my calendar for next June in San Francisco for the 2008 San Francisco conference – drawing big plans to eat, shop, learn, and mostly importantly get better at running a language business!

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