Global Pragmatica LLC®

Erin Vang will moderate a panel discussion on “Leading Globalized Software Development in Your Company” presented on Monday, October 10, 2011, 2:30-5pm at the Network Meeting Center at Techmart.

Developing Software for the World – Internationalization, Localization and Beyond

This event is by invitation only and limited to 50 participants. Register online and join us on Monday, October 10th at 2:30pm in Santa Clara, CA for an expert presentation and panel discuss on leading globalized software development.

What: Leading Globalized Software Development Presentation and Expert Panel Discussion

When: Monday, October 10, 2011; 2:30-5pm

Where: Network Meeting Center at Techmart

5201 Great America Parkway

Santa Clara, California 95054

Cost: Complimentary

Open to: Lingoport customers and friends (space is limited; approval required)

Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/308146424

Panelists: Tex Texin, Chief Globalization Architect at Rearden Commerce, Andrew Bredenkamp, CEO at Acrolinx, Loic Dufresne de Virel, Localization Strategist at Intel, Richard Faubert, Manager, Software Development QA at Cisco, and Adam Asnes, Founder & CEO of Lingoport.

Panel Facilitator: Erin Vang, Global Pragmatica LLC®

This event is by invitation only and limited to 50 participants. Register online and join us on Monday, October 10th at 2:30pm in Santa Clara, CA for an expert presentation and panel discuss on leading globalized software development.

Customers & friends of Lingoport and Acrolinx are cordially invited to join us for a special event on the eve of Localization World in Santa Clara on Monday, October 10th at 2:30pm. Join us at TechMart for an interactive presentation and expert panel discuss on how to lead globalized software development at your company.

Together, industry experts from Rearden Commerce, Acrolinx, Intel, Cisco and Lingoport will present and discuss:

• Developing software for the world
• Closing the loop between internationalization and localization
• Content authoring with localization in mind
• Measuring software development for globalization
• How to justify and gaining approval for software globalization (i18n and L10n) from management
• Measuring ROI on your globalization projects
• Agile software development best practices, and much more

The event is open to Lingoport customers & friends and registration is requested. The event targets customer-side internationalization, localization, and globalization managers, software developers and engineers, content developers and technical writer, and anyone interested in understanding and promoting the software globalization process and the effects i18n and L10n have on an organization as a whole.

Agenda

2:30-3:00pm: Introductions and networking.

Coffee and cookies will be provided.

3:00-3:50pm: Presentation and Case Studies: Leading Globalized Development in Your Company

Tex Texin, Chief Globalization Architect at Rearden Commerce and Adam Asnes, Founder & CEO of Lingoport, will discuss how to lead globalized development within a company. Tex and Adam will also showcase real-life case studies and many best practices.

3:50-4:10pm: Break

4:10-5:00pm: Expert panel discuss – To Globalize, or Not. That is the Questions!

We’ll continue the afternoon with an expert panel discussion featuring some of the most experienced industry experts from Rearden Commerce, Acrolinx, Intel, Lingoport and Cisco. Developing software for the world has unique challenges and can add tremendous growth and value to a company’s bottom line. In today’s fast-paced and economically challenging business environment, software companies have very little room to make costly mistakes or to miss out on global opportunities. The goal of the panel discussion is to stimulate debate on a variety of software development, globalization, internationalization and localization related issues. Panel members will discuss real-world best practices and answer and discuss questions from the audience.

5:00-6:00pm: Open Bar – Networking and Discussion

We’ll conclude the afternoon with a networking session and drinks sponsored by Acrolinx and Lingoport. Many of us will then probably head over to the LocWorld opening reception dinner.

Round Table Facilitator

Erin Vang

Erin Vang, PMP, is Principal Pragmatist with Global Pragmatica LLC®, which offers facilitative leadership for technical audiences. She has over twenty years of experience in statistical software documentation, quality assurance, project management, and localization, most recently as International Program Manager for the JMP Research and Development at SAS, and previously with Abacus Concepts and SYSTAT. Vang holds degrees in music performance and math, is a PMI-certified Project Management Professional, and has extensive training in facilitative leadership and conflict resolution. She writes a regular column for Multilingual magazine and is in much demand as a speaker, event moderator, and facilitator.

Panelists

Tex Texin

Chief Globalization Architect at Rearden Commerce

Tex Texin, chief globalization architect at Rearden Commerce, has been providing globalization services including architecture, strategy, training and implementation to the software industry for many years. Tex has created numerous globalize products, managed internationalization development teams, developed internationalization and localization tools, and guided companies in taking business to new regional markets. Tex is also an advocate for internationalization standards in software and on the web. He is a representative to the Unicode Consortium and the World Wide Web Consortium.

Andrew Bredenkamp

CEO at Acrolinx

Andrew Bredenkamp is cofounder and CEO of Acrolinx. Andrew has over 20 years’ experience in multilingual information development. Before starting Acrolinx, Andrew was head of the Technology Transfer Centre at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence language technology lab. Andrew holds degrees in technical translation and linguistics and a Ph.D. in computational linguistics. He is on the advisory board of a number of organizations, including Translators without Borders and The Centre for Next Generation Localisation.

Loïc Dufresne de Virel

Localization Strategist at Intel Corporation

Loïc Dufresne de Virel is currently a localization strategist within Intel’s in-house localization team. In this role, his main activities include overseeing the use of Intel’s translation management system and deployment of other localization tools, constantly advocating for proper and improved internationalization and localization practices and processes for web, software and “print” collateral, as well as defining the training roadmap for localization and internationalization. Prior to moving to Oregon and joining Intel, where he has been involved in localization for the past 12 years, Loïc spent a few years in Costa Rica, working as a regional technical adviser for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Richard Faubert

Manager, Software Development QA at Cisco

Richard Faubert has over 20 years of experience in telecommunications technical support for ROLM/IBM/Siemens. Richard joined Cisco Systems in 2000 and has worked in a number of capacities, including Software Development Manager and Program Manager. He is currently the QA Manager of Cisco’s TelePresence. Richard is an alumni of Washington State University.

Adam Asnes

President & CEO of Lingoport

Adam Asnes founded Lingoport in 2001 after seeing firsthand that the niche for software globalization engineering products and services was underserved in the localization industry. Lingoport helps globally focused technology companies adapt their software for worldwide markets with expert internationalization and localization consulting and Globalyzer software. Globalyzer, a market leading software internationalization tool, helps entire enterprises and development teams to effectively internationalize existing and newly developed source code and to prepare their applications for localization.

This event is by invitation only and limited to 50 participants. Register online and join us on Monday, October 10th at 2:30pm in Santa Clara, CA for an expert presentation and panel discuss on leading globalized software development.

[Update: the POIs didn’t work. At all. I am a complete failure, and I blame the awkward interface and lack of support for creating POIs. Ultimately this is a story of yak-shaving: I went way further into miserable geekitude than I would ever think necessary, and in the end I didn’t even succeed. Argh!]

This doesn’t have much to do with JSL or facilitative leadership. Here’s a button that will let you add fuel stations that sell ultra low-sulfur diesel in the USA to your TomTom GPS as a POI (points of interest) file. [But don’t click it! It doesn’t work!]

Why?!

The answer is even more bizarre than you might think: because TomTom’s support is horrible!

Don’t get me wrong–I love my GPS, a TomTom Go 930. I bought my first TomTom several years ago, after extensive research to determine that it was the best GPS with the best GUI and the best Mac connectivity (I’m just that kind of geek). It was a TomTom Rider 2nd edition for motorcycles. I loved it. I also used it in my car, until one day about six months later some cretin in my neighborhood stole it out of my car.

After a lot of misery and hassle involving police reports, insurance agents, and TomTom’s customer service folks, I got spectacularly nowhere and had to buy a new one. Which I enjoyed for another six months or so until some cretin in the neighborhood of San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House smashed my car window and stole my second TomTom.

After a few more months without a GPS, and some more runaround with police reports and insurance and TomTom, I gave up and ordered a third GPS—this time a regular car model that was quite a bit cheaper.

The story begins with my needing to add this data as a POI to my TomTom. I recently bought a clean-diesel car (a Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen TDI–and why, yes, I do love it!) and don’t have a clue where to find diesel between here and my parents’ house in Montana, where I’ll be for Thanksgiving. So I googled for a while and managed to find an .ol2 file with ultra low sulfur diesel-selling station locations online somewhere–I don’t even remember where. I “knew” that .ol2 was the format I needed for TomTom, or at least it used to be. But I also knew that getting an .ol2 file onto my TomTom properly was more easily said than done, so I went digging around on TomTom’s support page. I exhausted myself searching for the information I needed, but I did find an online wizard for adding a button to my website for other people to use my POIs!

So, I struggled through that wizard, and after a few false attempts that were thwarted by browser compatibility issues, I got the job done. It wasn’t until I got to the very last page–“add this html code to your website template”–that I could actually put the darned POIs on my own TomTom, by clicking their test button. That, of course, didn’t work either, until I switched to a different browser and started all over again.

Lessons learned:

• it’s easier to publish a POI file than to install it
• but you need to use Firefox
• and you need to be patient
• and if you want to import an icon, it has to be a 22×22 JPG file (you’d think they could have told me that… but no!)
• and “just spending a couple minutes to install some POIs that I already have” in preparation for an upcoming trip is not a good way to get the work done that needs to be done before I leave

So, caveat emptor: I found the .ol2 file somewhere else, and I don’t know how good it is. I’m not good at drawing icons, so this one isn’t great but I think it’ll do the job.

If you do find it useful, and you need a facilitator to help your company accomplish something audacious or to help your team get through some difficult conversations, or if you need some help with localization or software development or program management, give me a call. If you don’t find it useful or if it strands you in the middle of nowhere with an empty tank, please accept my apologies and let me assure you that we at Global Pragmatica are much better at facilitative leadership and all that other stuff than making POI files for TomToms.

If you’re one of the managers at TomTom and you want to know why I think your support sucks, or if you’d like me to introduce you to some user experience and content strategy experts who will help you fix it, please contact me immediately.

I’m not being compensated by anyone to write about TomTom here or elsewhere. If that changes, or if someone at TomTom gets in touch with me and offers to replace one of my two stolen TomTom Rider 2 devices by way of thanking me or apologizing for the above, I’ll post an update here.

If you’re the nice person who made US_ULSDF.ov2, thanks in advance. I hope it works, and please feel free to direct people wanting it TomTom-ized here. [Update: it didn’t work.]