Review of localization event in Portland

SDL hosted a localization networking event on June 16th in Portland, OR.  The panelists were Francoise Hovivian, Steve Kemper and Yvan Hennecart.  With around 20 attendees, it turned out to be a fantastic knowledge exchange on localization best practices and solutions.

The expert panelists brought years of expertise in localization to the discussion.  Francoise is the VP of Global Programs at Valente Consulting.  She worked for Microsoft for 11 years as a globalization project manager in charge of evangelizing globalization best practices to the Windows User Assistance team and has authored multiple articles on localization and globalization.  She led the discussion on gauging the return on investment for localization spending, when to localize and effectively educating stakeholders on localization.  It was an honor to hear her speak on these topics and people in the audience were able to discuss their own solutions and ideas as well.

Steve  has spent more than a decade building global brands and helping clients succeed online in the U.S. and abroad. A seasoned online business strategist and marketer, Steve has significant experience in the technology, entertainment, health care, publishing and travel & tourism industries, among others.

In addition to writing magazine articles and white papers about international online marketing and multilingual website development, Steve addresses audiences around the country, from the Japan Society of New York to the Software Association of Oregon.  His expertise crested an interesting discussion on measuring user acceptance in target locales, collecting information from customer support teams to provide data about localization and managing global websites.

Yvan has over 14 years of experience in the localization industry in a wide range of roles including, project management, program management, account and business development, and operations management.  Beginning his career as a translator and project manager gives him deep understanding of client needs, solutions, and budgetary requirements.  His skill as divisional director at SDL comes from his expertise in managing all aspects of translation and localization projects, directing project teams, and monitoring customer success. Yvan provided insight into best practices for in-country review, terminology management and localization in a recession.

The discussion was very interactive and provided best practices, strategies and solutions for common, and not so common, localization challenges.  For a listing of similar events near you, please visit www.sdl.com/events. SDL is also beginning a webinar series in a few weeks on a number of topics – links below. The entire list of webinars is

Week 1 – July 07, 2009 (9:00 PDT) Increasing Translation ROI
Week 2 – July 14, 2009 (9:00 PDT) Localization Testing
Week 3 – July 21, 2009 (9:00 PDT) Best Practices for Machine Translation
Week 4 – July 28, 2009 (9:00 PDT) Localizing Audio and Visual Content
Week 5 - August 04, 2009 (9:00 PDT) Best Practices for in-country validation and review
Week 6 - August 11, 2009 (9:00 PDT) Localization in an Agile environment
Week 7 - August 18, 2009 (9:00 PDT) Business Process Outsourcing