Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Multilingual. Oh, sorry, I'll start over. It's localization today. It's the first time we're recording this year, so we'll do it again. Matteo, forgive me.
Hello, everyone. This is our first recording of 2025 and we have an amazing guest with us, Marjolaine Groot, former CEO of Multilingual magazine, back again in our industry. Marjolaine, welcome back.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Thank you. It's kind of fun to be interviewed by my old co workers, the new boss.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: It's very interesting how this industry works. It's an amazing community. I think that's very obvious to everyone that joins us and we're super happy to have you back. You are writing for Multilingual as well and you've written, you continue writing, you are now working on a very interesting project. So why don't you tell us why did you come back to this industry and why Nimsi do an introduction of this new project? Oh, yes.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm working on the Nimzi 100. I'm project managing, the whole start to finish process. So outreach, you know, data analysis and it's, it's very exciting. It's. It's fun to see the back end of it because as you know, Eddie, we at Multilingual, we have been publishing it and shipping it out with the magazine, which we're going to do again this year or you are going to do again this year for us.
I'm now with Nimsy, so that's what I'm working on and it's exciting.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: And tell us a little bit. Of course, it's very obvious to everyone. Why would anyone come back to our industry? And, you know, it's a difficult thing to describe. Could you make an effort to describe what this industry is and why you're back?
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Sure. I mean, industry is almost not the right word. It's the right word for an outsider. But community, I think is more what everybody knows. It feels like language, industry, community, because it is inherently about communicating and about, you know, bridging miscommunication, bridging cultures.
It just feels so much like a community. And then what comes with it is if you have worked in it, you have a very, very particular knowledge set, which is it's culture, it's language. Right. And then you have a network and the network is pretty tight. People know that. And additionally, with the work at Multilingual that I've done for, what was it, eight years, I have experience in publishing, in getting people's thoughts put into the Medium of a printed magazine that you can hold in your hand and be proud of, as well as website desktop publishing of such information, make it easy to understand and get the right information across. So with these skill sets, knowing I had them, and I was honestly, I was burnt out before. It was really hard to get going, to get out of bed, and to create fresh ideas for multilingual. So it was right to change leadership there. I went to work outside, which I love.
It's only a summer job, though, so I do some geology work. It's field work in Alaska, way out in the sticks. It really suits my character. But it is only for about four months out of the year, and those four months are really, really hard physically. So for winter, I was looking for something to do and, you know, I had found a job. I had been hired. I was going to help build very, very exclusive small passenger airplanes. This happens to be done here. There's a small company here in Sandpoint where I live, and I was hired there. And then I started thinking, but I can't really use my skills. Like, I have this really cool skill set. It's very particular and it doesn't quite come in handy. So I am much more useful somewhere else. So I reached out to Renato because he's, you know, kind of the spider in the center of the web of everything, to see if he knew of anyone that was looking for someone who could do a project.
And he basically said, let me think about it, and then talked to Laszlo on their team and they said, maybe you should come work for us. And so that's how it happened.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: That's a great. That's a great development. And of course, yes, the skillset is welcome. And we can kind of infer what's going to happen to a project like the NIMC100 when it has the entire brain power of someone who used to release a magazine every month and basically coordinate hundreds of articles a year and put all of that energy into one single project. What do you think immediately are things that are going to change about the project management of the NIMC 100?
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Well, I'm hoping that it will be smoother. Of course, I'm prioritizing things differently than the former project managers of it. And it's my first time. Hopefully I'll be back every year to do this. Fingers crossed.
So I think it will take at least this first year to understand if my prioritization is good or not, if it helps or if it doesn't.
Finding the roadblocks in a project this big it just takes going through the process. I think as far as what people will notice in the interface when the project, when the, the product is released. So when the, when the website and the, the ranking and report are published, I don't know if visually it will be very different. You know, the content is very comprehensive. What we want to change though is including, we want to include more results from mid market players. So mid market LSPs, anyone with a revenue over US$1 million equivalent and you can report in any currency by the way, we just, we, you know, we convert that into US dollar so we can make the right ranking.
You know, we write about verticals, we write about market outlook. It's not only the 100 largest LSPs that can add valuable information about that. So we really want to reach out to the mid market LSPs to enter their data and perhaps after the Nimzi 100 we will have a larger ranking list. So this is something I'm hoping for. This has been an ambition of Nimzi for a long while.
But even if that doesn't come to fruition, more information is better to get a more detailed report. And those details, they help all the other LSPs understand better what they want to be focusing on. You know, how do they compete in the current marketplace and if they have a choice of where geographically to focus, they can use the report to see what is a good idea, where to expand.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: And just to piggyback on that, you are mentioning those that are going to consume the NIMC 100 and of course now you're going to include more information, more insights, it might broaden that scope as well. Who is the NIMC 100 meant for? Who should be reading it?
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Sure, I mean anyone in the language industry, but also of course buyers, people that work in language industry consulting. If, imagine if you're working with a big enterprise, you know, billions of, billions of dollars worth of, of cash flow there and you're trying to help them optimize their, their localization program. You want to be able to show them why they should be spending money on localization in I don't know, India for example, the NIMSI 100 report is, is, is a, it can support you in making that argument. Right? So we're trying to get money from enterprises really simply put, right? There's buyers out there, there's buyers out there. But the biggest hurdle for an LSP is to explain why they should be investing in certain verticals, why they should be investing in certain markets, certain geographies. So I think that's where it really comes in handy. And you know, that's just on top of just knowing what's going on in the industry because it's a lot of remote work. People sit at home, they do their job, they know what's happening with their company and their friends, companies. But a big picture view is always useful, right? It's like, it's like traveling. If you, you like your town, you like your state, you know a lot about your region, you go somewhere else and you have a different perspective after you've seen the bigger picture.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: That is, that is of course what, what everyone wants at these days, especially with, with, with so much turmoil. I wonder, I wonder what you're going to be finding and I'm sure we'll have a follow up conversation on what the findings are now with the, with the, with the broader scope, which is very exciting. I've had companies at events tell me, oh, I wish I could make these rankings. But you know, if you over $14 million, it's impossible for anyone to kind of like see where you're at. And it makes a lot of sense, right? A lot of sense. You'll have the Inc. 5000, the 1000, the 500, et cetera, et cetera. But thank you for sharing that insight. To do that then you need hundreds, if not thousands of companies, LSPs, to send you this information.
What are you hoping to find there and why, if I'm an lsp, why should I share my revenue, share my company size and so publicly with you?
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Absolutely. Because it's kind of, you know, scary, right? Nobody needs to know. When you're a privately owned lsp, which is most of them by the way, if you're a privately owned lsp, why would you hang your laundry out like that, as we say in Holland? And it is a fair question, especially if you're struggling, especially if you've seen your revenue shrink. Why would you let potential customers know that you did 3% less than last year? Right. But that's not what it's about, okay? It's, it's, it's about, it's about sharing your challenges and that might help you realize why those things are changing. Right. But it also helps you see as you're going to get compared with other companies who, maybe the average company, maybe the average LSP lost 8% this year. Maybe they grew 12 and you grew 11 and you're like, oh, cool, I'm on track. Right. Maybe you grew three and you think it's not very good and you See that everyone else grew one. Sure, you can, you know, privately compare yourself to the other companies after the report comes out, but you can be part of this research. You can be part of the research and it comes with perks. Here's the one biggest perk. If you get mentioned, if you get ranked, if you. And it's not only the ranking, we focus on other things as well, not just the top 100. We say, for example, the women led, women owned.
We develop these focus areas of the industry based on what's important to people. So it's also about the values of the industry. And as we kind of put a magnifying glass on those, that's where you want to be included as well. Right. And then you get a, you get a badge. So you say like these are, you know, 20 women led, women owned, or these people, these companies really focus on DEI or these are the best adopters of AI tools this year. I'm not sure what we're going to find this year. Right. That all depends on the survey results. And then we can help hone in on something that's happening that's worth putting to the forefront. And then those companies will get a badge, the badge you can always wear as an honorary degree and say, hey, I am one of the top 20 at adopting AI, for example, of 2024. And in 2023 we saw a lot of development around AI, of course, technology, ChatGPT, LLMs, and we're focusing on that again this year. But I'm just curious to see what people are saying about that shift that happened in the previous year. Right. These things are developing so you can start predicting the next year, in the next couple of years. And it's just as the more data we get, the more we can interpret from it and the more useful that is to any lsp. So any LSP should join.
Yeah, we're here with open arms and.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: It'S incredible because you've also mentioned that this is part of the community. This is part of an activity for the community as the NIMC100 is publicly and freely available on website PDF. And if you want to get a printed copy, you can get that printed copy that has a cost like the one margin is sharing right now. And just before we go, because I know you are rushing with a lot of these activities and gathering all these data, beautiful Graphs on the NIMC100 as you came back to the localization industry and we've seen you on and off LinkedIn and you're out there and then you come back what confirmations have you received as you come into the industry or where things have surprised you? What have you found as you're coming back and you're engaging again with people and talking again with others? What's. What's going on there?
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Well, it's just nice to see that people are genuinely excited to get an email from me again. And, you know, it's not just, oh, gosh, you know, it's. It's really nice.
Yeah, it feels genuine. And so my outreach to people is genuine.
We don't use a lot of like mass emailing to get, to get this information. We want to also have interviews with executives at LSPs again of any size. Don't really care.
And it's meant to be an open and genuine conversation. And I feel that the moment I came back, there's not.
I didn't just step out of the fence and the fence is still up. I came back and it's like, oh, yeah, doors are wide open. So that's exciting for me and I'm going to pay that forward in all the conversations I'm going to be having over the next couple of months.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Well, we are very excited to finalize this work with the NIMC100, seeing the results and insights and I'm very sure we're going to have follow up conversations on this. Marjolaine, this is your home. Please let us know if you ever need us for anything. Any final words to our wonderful audience that listens to localization today across the globe.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: I'm just going to say thanks for listening because this was an idea. I started the podcast and I'm happy it's alive and keep it going and.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: It will continue thriving for many years. And thank you for planting the seed. And everyone, thank you so much for listening. My name is Eddie Arrieta. I'm the CEO here at Multilingual Media and with us was Marjolaine Grood, former CEO of Multilingual Media and right now leading the NIMC100. Thank you so much, Marjolaine.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Right, that's it.
