Interview with Catherine Potter

This is an interview with Catherine Potter. She gives her insights and perspective on this year's STC conference.

Mobile Blogging Failed, STC Conference Day 2

Well, the mobile blogging idea failed. I didn't have the patience to key in every single word with my not smartphone phone. I should get an Iphone if I want to seriously mobile blog. Yesterday, Catherine and I arrived in Atlanta, and we had to set up our booth. The new booth looks awesome, pictures to come. Now, I'm sitting in a session about blogging and using wikis and blogging about it. Hilarious. Anyway, the blogging aspect wasn't anything new, but the info on wiki's is pretty neat. The speaker is explaining the whole wiki process: setting it up, expanding it, and updating. ICD is considering creating a wiki to update our clients on what's going on with their projects. Twitter would work, but no one seems to think it's very professional. "Wiki Wars" the speaker just said that. Apparently, it happens. People battle it out to see what's actually "true" content. I know, I went off on a tangent. Ok, back to wikis.

The speaker is a writer for Floss manuals, and they use the wiki they created to run book sprints. Book Sprints are a collaborative writing effort to create a book or manual in a short period of time. One option is to use the wiki as a collaborative writing community like a writers block, but on an online community where things can be debated, edited and changed all at the same time. Floss Manuals was able to create a manual for Firefox users in 5 days, and it was a collaborative effort with Mozilla developers. That's pretty quick. There's so much out there in the online community, that people are starting to make business connections and promote their services through the internet. In order to succeed though, you have to be able to utilize the internet effectively, and manage and update your blogs, and wikis so people continue to follow your posts and stay connected.

Esprit d'ICD Spring 2009

Hello All,

ICD's Newsletter Esprit d'ICD has received a face lift for 2009. Gone are "Catherine's Column", "Employee Profile", and "Puzzler" (Ipod's are to valuable to give away during hard economic times). We have more content now and the articles are more concise. Now, you get more stuff to read and more information. We have tried to add article that are a little more widespread and encompass different issues and industries. Some highlights include: "New strides in machine interpretation", "Instant sharing of views and news through Twitter", "The first GPS without a screen", and "What's in a car name?" You can read the newsletter here

We have tried to include what's relevant in today's world, and what's going on in the translation industry. I hope you enjoy reading this issue. If you want to subscribe to our mailing list and receive a copy, email: translate@icdtranslation.com

I'll be in Alanta this coming week for the STC conference, and I'm going to try mobile blogging. Hopefully, I'll be able to inform you about the goings on at the STC, and stuff that might happen with the ICD team as we take on Atlanta.