Equal to the task

“Offering 1995 technology in 2020 will get you fired.” With these words, Xillio’s CEO Rikkert Engels threw down the gauntlet at the opening of GALA Connected 2020. Kicking off with a company that specialises in connectors served to underline GALA’s intent of getting the community of language services professionals all plugged in and connected to one another. At the end of day one, I can concur with the organisers – in this case virtual does indeed equal inclusive and accessible.

 GALA has succeeded in developing a simple yet effective event app. Whilst the presentations take place in Zoom and the networking in Remo, attendees can access both types of sessions from within the same conference app, which saves a lot of confusion and hopping around. Participation has been extremely smooth. There was a bit of confusion when a bug in the app decided to mix up the attendees’ profile photos, but Istvan Lengyel from BeLazy quickly turned that into an amusing chat of ‘Who was I before I became me’ on LinkedIn.

 In true social media platform style, the app contains an activity feed which, on the first day, was mainly used for introductory posts from the participants. There’s also a separate Zoom chat running concurrently with the presentations, where the moderators and audience exchange comments about the session and raise questions for the presenters. All very well organised and coherent.

 The conference programme is built around the working day in the Pacific Daylight time zone and, being in Europe, I had to log off before the end of the day. I was hoping to catch up with the recorded sessions whilst my colleagues in the Americas sleep, but at the time of writing this on Wednesday morning BST I can’t yet find any recordings in the app. Having them available immediately after each session would help to instil that perfect sense of inclusion and accessibility in all global attendees.

 When asked in his session ‘what will happen in the language services industry in 2021’, Renato Beninatto from Nimdzi said the answer was simple: We adapt. That was in reference to how we do business. But an important part of how we do business is how we learn and network. And here we are: GALA Connected is all about engaging in modified learning and networking. The circumstances have prevented us from physically meeting in thrilling locations this year, but we are still sharing something that matters, albeit without a drink and a dance!