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Once again, we attended ELIA’s event on Project Management. It was a really intense event featuring 4 days comprised of 4 virtual conference sessions lasting only half a day to allow the attendees to continue their day-to-day work at their respective companies. None of the many participants were dissuaded by this challenge, all of whom showed up ready to learn and share, including our company representative, Rasa Stalnionytė.

ELIA Focus PM brought project managers from around the world together online, creating a space where they could share their ideas, find new solutions and adopt new approaches to handling different situations that project managers face on a daily basis. A wide range of topics was covered, including:

-how artificial intelligence is shaping the future of business and the PM perspective on automation

- the evolving Project Manager role and how to become a new generation PM capable of embracing new challenges in a changing industry environment

- the importance of test translation and how to use it to win new clients

- understanding client needs and offering adapted solutions to create greater value for clients

and finally

- how our solutions and ideas can help make the world a better place

Most importantly, the Focus PM event is not about listening, but about interacting, identifying solutions and having fun together. All in all, this insightful event give participants food for thought and ideas they can apply in practice.

Thank you ELIA for one more great event!

The eleventh edition of the Nordic Translation & Interpretation Forum was held in beautiful Skepparholmen outside of Stockholm.

It was one of the very first language industry events to take place in person since before the start of the pandemic. Even though the initial plan of the organisers was to make this year a purely local, Swedish event, it attracted 87 attendees from 15 countries. This shows how eager our industry peers are to gather together, to learn and network live.

Our CEO, Asta Rusakeviciene, was also extremely happy to have the chance to meet old friends and make new connections.

Every language industry event has two crucial components: content and networking. In this case, both were covered to the highest extent (or at least, to the extent of an event lasting one and half days): enlightening presentations covered not only main industry trends but also (and most importantly) provided insights into the peculiarities of Nordic languages and markets – all hand in hand with active networking. The event was a great success!

We hope to meet again next year in person at the NTIF. The organisers hinted at the closing session that it might take place in Reykjavik!

While people complain about travel restrictions on Earth, the Meet Central Europe conference offered us the opportunity to “travel” to Mars. This virtual adventure on a Martian 3D world was hosted on the Confer-O-Matic platform.

The “trip” was worth it: we mingled with almost 400 attendees from 43 countries and 5 continents, met friends, made new connections and learned from very well selected, knowledgeable speakers.

The MCE conference is an event with a few unique features: it creates a unique “platform” for LSPs and freelancers to meet and start potential cooperation, features Central European languages and the players of this region and offers conference content focused mainly on vendor management, a topic that is not so widely covered by other industry events.

We are looking forward to the next Meet Central Europe and hope it will be an in-person event.

Once more the GALA conference connected us all virtually. The theme, “Envisioning a New Future for the Language Industry”, as well as a programme featuring two concurrent tracks, was full of insightful sessions. We especially enjoyed the fact that most of the presentations were organised as panel discussions because this format is particularly convenient for virtual events and keeps the audience engaged. All the presentations were live and followed by very active Q&A sessions. The best feature of the conference platform was the possibility to watch the sessions after they ended, which allowed us to follow both tracks.

We think that the programme committee did an extremely good job and it’s a shame that the number of attendees was not as large as we are used to seeing at GALA conferences. There are a few reasons for this, of course: a number of events happened the same week and the audience was divided between them. Hopefully, GALA learned this lesson and will choose the dates for its next event wisely; people are tired of virtual events and less and less enthusiastic about networking online.

That is why we are so looking forward to the next GALA conference happening in person in San Diego next April. Its programme committee has already started working and we are proud to announce that our CEO, Asta Rusakevičienė, is one of its members.

Finally, the Eulogia community, or at least part of it, was able gather in beautiful Croatia for its general meeting. Of course, the meeting was held as a hybrid event to allow all the members to participate.

It offered a few days of deep knowledge sharing, brainstorming for solutions to internal issues submitted by the member companies for common analysis followed by a debate on Eulogia’s future, a presentation of results by the working groups and definition of the directions these groups will embark on next. Furthermore, the board elections took place during this event and 5 new board members were called to lead our alliance for the next two years. We are proud to announce that our CEO Asta Rusakevičienė was elected Chairperson of Eulogia. Congratulations, Asta!

In an era of online events when organisers are going all out to keep attendees engaged with platforms capable of imitating real face-to-face interaction, EUATC went one step forward and invited us to meet in the virtual 3D world. After the event, the opinion of the delegates was almost unanimous – the experience was the closest possible substitute for an in-person meeting. In fact, the participants needed to practice navigating their avatars, finding the right place and being on time at the session without bumping into each other (or the avatars) :). However, flying from one place to another, meeting on the top of an airplane or dancing at a party added some extra fun and created lots of networking opportunities.

TMS is one of the most important company management tools, which means it is crucial for us to use it properly and be aware of its greatest functionalities to enhance our productivity and make informed decisions. The translation management tool we have used for more than 10 years is XTRF, so we weren’t going to miss the second edition of the XTRF Summit #online to keep abreast of its development. This event was called “Innovative approaches for the future of localization”, a theme that was well reflected in the presentations and discussion. The information we received, alongside networking opportunities with industry peers using the same TMS and the chance to learn from them, lead us to believe that the XTRF team will be inviting us to meet at a third productive Summit edition soon.

The GALA conference has always kicked off our spring season of language industry gatherings. Even though we were once again unable to meet in person, the GALAconnected virtual event was a solid event. Enlightening presentations, engaged participants and live networking let us feel again the power of the GALA community.

GALA’s face-to-face conference is planned for September 2021 and we are already looking forward to it.

ELIA is famous for organising focus events for different actors in the language industry. Its “Together” event aims to bring together freelance language professionals and language service companies for constructive dialogue and mutual growth.

Our vendor manager attended “Together” because we believe in the power and possibilities of strong relationships between freelance language professionals and language companies.

The three-day programme was quite impressive: communication, technology, ethics, recruitment and other important topics were discussed during the fifth edition of Together, not to mention networking, which was also crucial part of the event. We look forward to meeting again next year.

After a few years’ break we were able to attend Localization World, the largest localization industry event assembling both localization services customers and providers.

Exciting and engaging panels and insightful presentations gave us new energy to move forward in these strange times of uncertainty. The main takeaway from this two-day event: We are an industry that is impervious to crisis as we grow in multiple directions and constantly adapt. These encouraging thoughts reinforce our resilience and give us new impetus to embrace challenges.

ELIA’s event on Project Management is our project managers’ favourite event, since it is dedicated to honing the PM skills and attitudes that are required in today’s fast-paced, challenging and competitive landscape. In the four years leading up to now, one of our project managers travelled to a different city each year to attend this unique industry event. The fifth edition of this event was different, and not only because it was held virtually. This year the event’s extended format featured a 4-week programme with three hours of content per day, twice a week. Each week was dedicated to one topic covering the complex work of a project manager:  CAT tools master classes, key account management, vendor acquisition and retention, and finally the idea of technology automating and boosting our productivity.
Two project managers from our team, Edvinas Belevičius and Roberta Šareikaite, attended this event and were really impressed by the charismatic and knowledgeable speakers and active fellow participants. New insights from the event will be shared with our entire team. 
We will be sure not to miss ELIA’s next event on Project Management.  

For nearly 10 years, XTRF has facilitated our project management activities and helped to boost our productivity. It’s a tool we use every day, which is why it is important for us to keep up to speed with regards to system development and to know how to use its functions as efficiently as possible. To that end, we definitely could not miss the XTRF summit #online. We are really excited about the news we learned from the XTRF team: Chat and Business Barometer are new, amazing features that have been added to the system, which we will definitely implement into our daily routine as soon as possible and which, we are sure, will improve our productivity.
Thank you, XTRF team, for hosting this event. We are grateful to our industry peers who have shared their insights about the use of the system, its customisation possibilities and best practices.
The next XTRF summit has already been announced, and we registered for it without hesitation.

The 10th edition of the Nordic Translation Interpretation Forum took place virtually and instead of enjoying beautiful Reykjavik in person, we met our peers online. On one hand, the crowd was much more diverse and included not only Nordic and Baltic participants, but industry professionals from 28 countries. On the other, the event was shorter (only a few hours instead of the usual two days) and, of course, the virtual format prevented us from having in-person discussions over coffee or champagne. Despite these drawbacks, the event gave us “a shot of positive energy”. Two inspiring speakers, their thought-provoking questions and subsequent group discussions gave us new ideas to take away from the event. The forum motto “Don’t Refrain – Rethink” truly gave us a boost. We will wait for the #NTIF2021 which we hope will finally happen in Reykjavik. In the meanwhile, we will continue to rethink our new reality and find new ways to thrive in these volatile circumstances.

This year’s GALA conference, “The Language of Business. The Business of Language,” was replaced by a virtual version entitled GALAconnected. The coronavirus didn’t stop us from meeting peers, learning what is happening in the language sector or contributing to shaping our industry. This event was attended by more than 200 participants from over 30 countries. The fact that it was organised in Pacific daylight time didn’t keep us and many other participants from Europe and Asia from enjoying the event even though it meant long working hours. Thank you GALA for the great content and amazing networking possibilities.

It’s no surprise that this year’s ALC annual conference was held virtually, featuring three days of education, networking, and collaboration with the brightest minds in the LSC Community. Agile thinking, innovative solutions, best practices, forecasting the future – these were the themes covered and analysed in depth during the event. ALC’s promotional material promised to ensure the “full Conference Experience, virtually” and we would say that they almost kept that promise. The one minor difference was the coffee breaks, which were not so enjoyable without the opportunity to chat with industry friends face to face. :)

The 46th meeting of Eulogia, an alliance of hand-picked translation companies with just one member per language allowed to join, took place in Portsmouth. Membership in this alliance is something we take pride in. For twelve years, Diskusija has represented the Lithuanian language in this exclusive alliance, meeting our fellow Eulogia partners twice a year to share our expertise and inspire one another.

This is ELIA’s fourth event focused on project management. At Diskusija, we continue to attend these targeted events as this is a great opportunity for our project managers to meet their fellow colleagues from other language companies, to learn new tips and tricks for making their work more efficient and to feel part of a larger community of like-minded people.

The Meet Central Europe Conference took place in Prague. This event, targeting vendor management, was a great success! We want to thank the organisers for the energy they put into making it happen and the participants for inspiring and insightful talks or brief, but rewarding meetings. Our vendor manager Natalija enjoyed every moment.

We can't wait for the next meeting in Innsbruck.