Live from LocWorld

Breaking barriers. Building bridges.

At our core, that's what we aim to do for each of our clients. And at LocWorld, the leading international conference for localization experts, we have the opportunity to meet and learn from other language service industry professionals who are finding innovative, efficient, and meaningful ways to unite people around the world.

Our team is on the ground in Seattle at LocWorld 38, where we're an annual bronze sponsor. Here's the buzz from day one: what we're up to, what caught our attention, and what has us excited about the future.

We started our day in the exhibit hall, where we were able to meet informally with customers and friends in the industry and reveal our new brand. We're excited to showcase the elements that have inspired and reinvigorated us, which stress our commitments to simplification, quality, and our customers.

The conference officially kicked off with a keynote from Marcus East, Vice President of Product and Technology and CTO at National Geographic. In his session, titled "Change is the Only Constant," Marcus spoke to a room with a largely positive attitude toward the transformative nature of technology. He started his session with a poll, asking the audience how excited they felt about digital transformation. Indeed, the vast majority of respondents indicated excitement without reservation.

We're lucky to be a part of an industry that welcomes both change and technological advancement. We're confident that the human talent that peppers the language services industry, coupled with the incredible strides technologists have made and continue to make, will serve our clients well.

That, according to Marcus, is the most important common trait among successful companies that have survived the digital revolution. He cited numerous qualities such companies need to be successful—including flexible technology, experimentation, measurement, collaboration, and agility—but he stressed that customer-centricity is paramount.

That's a concept that resonates with us at Lionbridge. In all we do—across industries, media, and devices—we strive to offer the best possible customer experience and to make it as easy as possible for our customers to do business with us.

At Lionbridge, we embrace the power of technology to enhance the customer experience, to bridge gaps between humans, and to offer an additional layer of personalization that delights our customers. As Marcus said, "people want to be connected to others." It's our job to help them connect with anyone, anywhere.

We moved from the keynote session into afternoon panels and presentations, including one from our own CMO, Jaime Punishill. In a joint presentation with Subway's Carrie Fischer, Jaime discussed the pitfalls and best practices of rebranding a global company. Jaime's words echoed the tone that Marcus set in his keynote: change is constant, technology has fundamentally changed each customer's experience with any given brand, and we at Lionbridge are consciously embracing a new approach that is agile, responsive, and customer-focused.

What other topics and trends caught our attention this afternoon (and, we expect, will be front-of-mind for us in the weeks and months to come)?

1. Successful brands need to consider themselves global from the start and need to create—whether that means on-page content or SEO metadata—for a global audience.


2. Successful applications of machine translation (MT) can improve the experience for both the translator and the customer.


3. As MT gets "smarter," we won't see machines replace humans—but we will see the nature of work shift in this industry, and their will be a slate of pioneering, high-impact jobs that add value beyond translation.


4. The time is now to create a strategy and build content to meet an ever-increasing volume of voice searches—in every industry, around the world.

We ended the evening with an intimate gathering of close friends, customers, and colleagues. Here, we were delighted to announce our ongoing sponsorship of Translators Without Borders, an amazing organization that helps 400 million people in need all around the globe.

"Translators without borders works to bridge language gaps worldwide," says Krissey Welle, Senior Communications Officer. "We are working to bring language technology to marginalized languages and make sure everyone has access to information in a language they can understand.

"We are honored to have Lionbridge's support for yet another year. As Lionbridge enters the next phase of its new brand, we are excited to move forward together to break barriers and build bridges for everyone—especially those who need it most."

From start to finish, day one of LocWorld 38 was exciting and thought-provoking. We're looking forward to day two—check back for more on what's resonating with us, and leave a comment to let us know what's on your mind.