Slator is coming to San Francisco, the world’s technology capital. Join the language industry’s business and technology leaders for a full day packed with research, case studies, and actionable insights and an evening of targeted networking.
Check out our Youtube page for impressions of past SlatorCon’s and interviews, and read our coverage.
Due to an overwhelming response, SlatorCon San Francisco 2018 is sold out and at room capacity.
SlatorCon will be held at the premier waterfront Hotel Vitale in downtown San Francisco.
It will be the largest SlatorCon yet, featuring an expanded program including two 35-minute keynote presentations, two 35-minute panel discussions, and six 20-minute presentations.
There will be ample time for networking during lunch, a 45 minute afternoon break, and a networking reception on Hotel Vitale’s fantastic 7-floor terrace overlooking the San Francisco skyline, the Bay, Angel Island, and the Ferry Building.
Agenda
Registration & Networking
Welcome Address
Opening Keynote
Beyond The Business of Translation
Ferose V R
Senior Vice President and Head of Globalization Services
SAP
Today, effective translation—between cultures, languages, disciplines, and industries—is an increasingly great priority for many organizations worldwide. The emergence of new language technologies based on AI and machine learning has marked a key step in the evolution of machine translation tools. However, industry-specific translation remains mostly in-house and an underserved market, and is increasingly becoming challenging due its cross-context nature. This keynote unravels the impact of intelligent technologies in this segment and how the human-machine combination leads up to the Holy Grail of language services.
Technology Panel
2018 is the year of technology in the language industry. It is the year when the impact of decades of research into machine translation and productivity technology is sweeping through the translation and localization supply chain. How does neural machine translation impact real-life production and pricing? How does advancing tech benefit linguists in highly creative content types? Is the technology ecosystem becoming more open or closed? Slator Co-founder Florian Faes will explore these and other questions with industry leaders from Wordbee, GoPro, and Tencent.
Lunch
2018: The Language Industry’s Pivotal Year
Florian Faes
Co-Founder
Slator
2018 is the year that is having a profound impact on the language industry. The real-life impact of machine translation’s quality breakthrough. How M&A is transforming the vendor eco-system
How Augmented Translation Will Redefine the Value of Translators
Norbert Orozsi
CEO
memoQ
Stanisław Lem wrote in his Summa Technologiae over 50 years ago that human beings use technology to extend – augment – their bodies and minds to accomplish tasks, to achieve more and more. This is a very strong argument in favor of the notion of augmented translation. Translators using tools like memoQ are augmented with superpowers – enhanced memory and association capabilities, x-ray eyes (document filters), and eagle eyes for errors. Project managers have powers of enhanced multitasking and attention. Organizations have powers of molding all this smoothly into everything else they do (integration, connectors, translation broker interfaces etc). We have come a long way since Summa Technologiae, but we are just getting warmed up when it comes to Augmented Translation!
What Drives Adoption of Telephonic Interpreting (OPI) and Video Remote Interpreting (VRI)?
Jeremy Woan
Chairman and CEO
Cyracom
Jeremy will explore how regulatory and industry factors can drive or impede the adoption of Telephonic Interpreting (OPI) and Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) services.
SDL’s path to 2020, and how the Donnelley Language Solutions Accelerates its Transformation
Adolfo Hernandez
CEO
SDL
Two years into its transformation, SDL’s CEO will talk about the evolution of the company, it’s 2020 strategy, and how, after joining forces with Donnelley Language Solutions during the summer of 2018, it will accelerate its drive to be a leading player in specialist language solutions for premium and high-regulated industries to complement its content management and translation business.
Networking Break
Navigating Media Localization in Increasingly Turbulent Waters
Mark Howorth
CEO
SDI Media
Characterizing Media Localization as a steady growth industry is a gross over-simplification of what is going on beneath the surface. While the increasing importance of non-English speaking audiences is driving growth, that is only one of the trends impacting localization. Other key factors include collapsing windows, consolidation of localization buyers, availability of skilled translators / actors, changing customer requirements, and the emergence of machine translation. Come hear how SDI, the largest media localization company, is navigating through these turbulent waters.
A Personal Journey into Tech Localization and the User Experience
Lupe Gervas
Content Operations & Localization Manager
Quora
Globalization is constantly changing; innovations and localization needs are expanding. There are new fast rising markets: India, Vietnam; new needs: video, voice, mobile. We are all working towards creating a flexible industry that can adapt to these constant shifts, but are we preparing our teams? Do we have learning programs that are at par with the industry? Why is it sometimes so hard to get into the localization field? Why is it so difficult to move horizontally to other industries?
Startup Panel
The language industry is growing and offers a world full of opportunity to entrepreneurs and founders. But starting a business is hard and competition in the language industry is fierce. Slator co-founder Andrew Smart will moderate the startup panel and ask the CEOs of Cadence Translate, Wovn Technologies, and Boostlingo to share their stories about where they see their opening in the market, how they find traction, and how they think technology is changing their business and the industry.
Closing Keynote
Map Enterprise Globalization to a Local Buyer’s Journey
Anna Schlegel
Head of Globalization and Information Engineering
NetApp
Map the full enterprise globalization effort to a local buyer’s journey. Leave no pebble unturned. Map the effort to Bookings. End up reporting to CEO Business Review. Be indispensable. The journey from cost center to PNL.
Closing Remarks
Networking Reception
~ END ~
Lead Partner 
memoQ is a translation technology company that helps more than 25,000 organizations and individuals manage their translation related work.
Partner
Wordbee develops cloud based solutions to streamline translation processes since 2008.
Networking Sponsor
Boostlingo is a language software and technology company based in San Francisco, California, focused on defining the next generation of interpretation technology solutions.
Speakers
Ferose V R
Senior Vice President and Head of Globalization Services
SAP
Based in Palo Alto, Ferose heads the Globalization Services unit and is responsible for enabling the global adoption of SAP products worldwide. The unit consists of 1200+ employees spread across 40+ countries across the globe with a mission of empowering all businesses to run compliant locally and compete globally. Before heading Globalization Services, Ferose was the Managing Director of SAP Labs India. Starting at the age of 33, he held this post for over 5 years during which he transformed SAP Labs India into an innovation hub. In 2012, the company was recognized as one of the “Great place to work” in India for its very first time.
Ferose is a Director on the Board of Specialisterne Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation with the goal to create one million jobs for people with autism and similar challenges. He is the founder of the India Inclusion Foundation a nonprofit, aiming to bring the topic of inclusion at the forefront in India. The India Inclusion Summit, The Inclusion Fellowship and Inclusion Platform(Incluzone) are some of the initiatives under the nonprofit. Ferose has co-authored a best-seller book on people with disabilities, GIFTED. The book has been translated into four Indian regional languages. The Kannada translation won the prestigious Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award. Ferose also teaches “Personal Leadership” at Columbia University, New York.
Mark Howorth
CEO
SDI Media
Mark Howorth joined SDI Media as CEO in 2016, bringing almost three decades of experience to the team. He held prior industry roles as the COO of Panavision (cameras & lenses for cinema), CEO of National Mobile Television (television production trucks/OB vans) and was a Partner with Bain & Company’s Media/Technology practice (management consulting). He has a track record of helping investor-backed companies achieve their full potential through strategic focus and operational improvement. He serves as on the Board of Camp Gilboa in Southern California. He has a Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Sonia Oliveira
Senior Director – Globalization
GoPro
As the Senior Director of Globalization at GoPro, Sonia is responsible for International Strategy, Market Entry Criteria and Global Growth. Her department focuses on key business functions including Marketing, Firmware, Software and Media localization. As an experienced professional in the industry, Sonia has spent most of her career in leadership positions at start-ups and well-established companies including Siebel (Oracle), Adobe and Zynga. Sonia has lead all aspects of the localization cycle including marketing transcreation, internationalization and localization engineering, testing, program management and vendor management with distributed teams in the US, Europe and Asia. She is fluent in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French and holds a BA in Translation and Interpretation and an MA in International Relations.
Adolfo Hernandez
CEO
SDL
Adolfo joined SDL as CEO in April 2016. Prior to joining SDL, Adolfo was CEO of Acision, the mobile messaging market leader he helped turn around prior to its merger to Comverse to form Xura, Inc. Before that, he spent four years at Alcatel-Lucent, with his most recent position being Executive Vice President, Global Software Services and Solutions, where he was a member of the Executive Committee, reporting to the Group CEO.
Norbert Oroszi
CEO
memoQ
Norbert Oroszi has been CEO at memoQ, a translation technology company that helps more than 25,000 organizations and individuals manage their translation related work, since 2016. Clients like Nintendo, Siemens and Varian use memoQ’s project management and translation products to work smarter and deliver quality results on time. Before joining memoQ, Norbert built up a more than 16 year career in technology driven companies as a senior consultant and IT architect.
Jeremy Woan
Chairman and CEO
Cyracom
Jeremy Woan, Chairman and CEO, has transformed CyraCom International, Inc. into one of the fastest growing private companies in the US, and a leading provider of phone and video interpretation. Under his leadership, revenue has sextupled, and both he and the company have received multiple awards for leadership, job creation, and growth. Previously, Jeremy successfully built two technology companies through to IPO and served as board member and chairman of various private and public companies.
Lupe Gervas
Content Operations & Localization Manager
Quora
Lupe Gervas was previously the Global Manager – Content Operations and Product Support for Facebook, and before that she led the company’s Media Operations Global Product Support team. Her team helped launch and operationalize Watch, the on-demand video service operated by Facebook in the US, and also provided product support for Instagram and Facebook’s Creators and Media Partners. Prior to joining Facebook, she spent 5 and 1/2 years at Netflix heading the Language team that launched in more than 22 languages across the globe. Before localization, she was a TV and radio journalist in Europe and the United States.
Anna Schlegel
Head of Globalization and Information Engineering
NetApp
Anna N Schlegel is Head of Globalization and Information Engineering at NetApp. Anna is the President and co-founder of Women in Localization a worldwide non-profit with 4500 members. Anna was awarded 2018 Language Person of the Year, and Silicon Valley Woman of Influence in May 2018. Anna is the author of Truly Global. She is the founder of Imagine Educating Everyone, a Kenyan based non-profit as well as the US2020 STEMentors Silicon Valley. She is the Chair of WIT at NetApp.
Mark Shriner
Director North America
Wordbee
Mark Shriner is Director North America for Wordbee, maker of the world’s most feature-rich translation management system. Based in his hometown of Seattle, Mark has worked in a variety of executive roles in the localization industry including CEO Asia Pacific for CLS Communication, and Managing Director APAC for thebigword.
Matt Conger
CEO
Cadence Translate
Matt worked in both management consulting and private equity before founding Cadence Translate. He began his career at Bain & Company in New York and then worked at the energy private equity firm Hudson Capital Management as a Vice President. His undergraduate education is from Wharton and he has a master’s degree in engineering from Stanford. Having spent seven years of his career focused on due diligence, he founded Cadence because he saw how transformative one’s understanding of a market can be from information that lies just beyond the language barrier.
Bryan Forrester
CEO
Boostlingo
Bryan is the Chief Executive Officer of Boostlingo, a technology company based in San Francisco, CA that has built the interpretation communication and management platform for Language Service Companies to run their interpreting business on. Prior to his time leading Boostlingo, Bryan Co-Founded and led Anchor, Inc. which was acquired by eFolder in 2012. Bryan has held multiple leadership positions in large technology companies like Sonicwall, eFolder and Quest Software. Bryan is passionate about technology innovation that helps break down communication barriers.
Jeffrey Sandford
Co-founder
Wovn Technologies
Jeffrey Sandford studied computer science at the University of Texas at Austin. Shortly after graduating, he moved to Tokyo to push himself out of his comfort zone. Through an acquaintance, he found Takaharu Hayashi and together they founded WOVN.io. They saw an opportunity in the market for simpler website localization. WOVN.io is a website localization service that saves money and time by removing the development cost from a project.
Mike Kim
Localization Director
Tencent
Mike Kim supports games in globalization including I18N and L10N at Tencent America. He also supports live operations with game design analysis and monetization for global market. Mike has been in gaming localization for over 13 years and had an opportunity to build or scrap and build localization process half a dozen companies. Mike’s passion in creating the ideal localization process.
Florian Faes
Co-Founder and Managing Director
Slator
Based in Zurich, Florian Faes spent over eight years working in Asia, stationed in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Before launching Slator in 2015, he was with CLS Communication as Head of Asia and he was part of group management during the trade sale to Lionbridge.
Andrew Smart
Co-Founder and Commercial Director
Slator
A seasoned world traveller, Andrew is a versatile business leader adept at operating within culturally diverse and complex organizations. He enjoys strategy, client engagement, product development, and leading multinational teams to achieve peak performance. Born in Hawaii, Andrew has lived in Washington DC, London, New York, and Singapore. He has an MBA in Finance and Investments from The George Washington University in Washington DC and 25 years of experience across the media, internet, and financial service industries, including managing portfolios of media properties for companies Thomson Reuters, Fairfax Business Media, and The Economist Group.
Parking
Event Valet Parking is USD 40/ vehicle per day – Pre-booking is not required for valet. Aside from Valet, there is metered, street parking around the hotel.
SlatorCon is growing
SlatorCon is coming to San Francisco after sold out events in London, Tokyo, Zurich, and New York.
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