[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to the Weekend Review, your source for the latest news in the language industry. I'm your host, Eddie Arrieta. Let's dive right in in the state of Washington. In the United States, House Bill 1228 pass unanimously in both the House and Senate looking to create permanent funding to dual language programs in the state. Recent results show how students have the opportunity to learn core subjects in English and a second language, mostly Spanish, with many students become influenced by the time they leave elementary school. You can read more about
[email protected]. Onto the next news that we have, check out how Hiba Ahmad interviewed with Doctor Megan Majoka. Doctor Majoka is a PhD candidate at Georgetown University and working on breast cancer research at the National Institute of Health. She is also deaf. The power of this interview comes from the fact that many scientific terms do not have an interpretation into American Sign Language. Learn more about this
[email protected]. Dot finally, on to our last news of this week. In a study led by professors in the universities of Delaware, Shiwa, Hong Kong and Shanghai, they analyzed news articles from the New York Times and Reuters, both known for their dedication to provide unbiased news. They found that artificial intelligence generated content produced by each examined large language model demonstrates substantial gender and racial biases. Moreover, this artificial intelligence generated content generated by each of the large language models exist notable discrimination against females and individuals of the black race. Among the large language models and artificial intelligence generated content, chat GPT showed the lowest levels of bias, and chat GPT is the sole model capable of declining content generation when provided with biased prompts. You can read more about
[email protected] and we are very pleased to announce that our March issue is ready to ship. And yes, I can hear your claps all the way from the Internet. We have focused, as is tradition now, on the incredible women shaping the language industry. So let us know what you think about this issue. We're going to show you around what, what we have this year, and we have amazing, amazing perspective pieces that you will be able to read. This is not public yet, so you're all getting a preview of the digital issue that's not yet available to anyone to see. So stay tuned. On your emails, we will be sending the digital version, and the physical versions were starting to be shipped the day before yesterday, or it was yesterday. I think was yesterday. So thank you so much, everyone, for staying tuned with what's happening with our physical and digital magazine. And of course, none of this would be possible. Mila, if you can go to the very bottom where we have the buyers guide. This would not be possible without the support of our amazing sponsors. So let me take a second to thank every single one of our sponsors, which part of those is a gala? So let me help, or help me rather, welcome our guests. For this week, Alison Firch is and has been off, has been part of the Globalization and localization association for the past 14 years and has gone from leading marketing to becoming the executive director of the organization. Adding to this, Alison is part of several nonprofits and volunteering ventures around the world, and we are pleased to have her with us today to talk about climate change and gala. So please welcome Alison Firch, executive director at the Globalization and Localization Association. Alison, welcome.
I think you're muted.
It's happened to me.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Sorry about that. You'd think by now we'd all be pros. But thank you for having me and happy International Women's Day.
You saw a bunch of cool women in that issue that's coming out, so I thought I'd give a shout out.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you. And we were discussing with Mila right before that we should devote some time to talk about the fact that today is International Women's Day. And so you've done it. And we are hoping a multilingual, that this tradition stays forever, where in March we get the issue out and we focus on the incredible women shaping the industry.
We did not plan to get the issue out by March 8, but it worked out really well. We were super efficient last month. So shout out to our editorial team and the design team and Mila is part of that. And we said, we have a huge opportunity. We are there to, we are able to do it. So let's try to get the issue out by the 8th. And on your microphone last week, Alison, I started the show and then Mila had to take me out because I had my. So the whole thing about the weekend review, and here are the stories. I did it. By the time I noticed, I was into like the second story or something, I was like, why is Camila kicking me out? This makes no sense. And I'm like, oh, my microphone.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Happens to the best of us, right?
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Yes, it does. It does. I've seen it so many times. But thank you so much for joining us today. And of course, I'd love to learn more about gala and the event this year. I'm really excited about it. But right before we do that, I'd love to hear more about the climate change survey that I know you've been part of. So I really want to understand how it came about and why is this important to the industry, Mila is going to be sharing in the comments the link where people can participate on this survey and also some images on it while we talk. So, Alison.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: So, okay, cool. So the idea came to us from, from a member, a guy by the name of Mike Klinger, who's been in the industry a while. And what I want to say is, like, we all think about this topic, I think, you know, day to day, but we don't necessarily think about it in the context of work. We think about it at home. Like, what's our energy usage at home? How, you know, how much gas are we using? You know, do we turn our lights off when we leave a room? Do we recycle some of these, these other ideas? How much are we flying? But we don't necessarily think about it in the context of work. So Mike brought this idea to us, and there's actually an organization called the Week.com. And anyway, he said, we really need to talk about this from the work perspective and find out what we can teach people and how we can encourage people to make small changes in the workplace that add up to making global change. So we gathered together a group of industry like organizations representatives, so CSA research, multilingual gala ALC in the US and Mike's organization.
And we put our heads together and we thought, well, what can we do about it?
And what could be, like, different than what people hear day to day? And so what we thought is like, let's get a baseline. Let's figure out, you know, what are people's attitudes? What are their concerns? What are their actions and behaviors that they're already doing or thinking about doing? How supportive are their organizations? How much do their organizations care about this topic? How much do their clients care about this topic? So we put together a survey to establish some baselines. And once we get those baselines, we're going to have a better idea of what to do next. And it could be that we, you know, spotlight some companies that are doing amazing already. It could be that we teach people some really simple, easy, basic things that they could do at work.
We'll see. And so I'll stop there. The survey is open now. I think Mila's sharing some links. We would really appreciate your input. It's really fast, really easy, not onerous, and it'll help us kind of understand where to go from here. And we get it. Everybody's busy. Your minds are on lots of other things. But like, any changes, you know, it's inconvenient. Sometimes you have to pay attention to it, though. So just give a couple minutes and we'll take it from there.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Oh, thank you very much, Alison. And I have to say, I looked into the survey and did it myself and it doesn't take long. And I think what's most important is that we sometimes, like you said, we don't understand what is it that I can do. Sometimes we feel very vulnerable and we are like, I should be a climate activist. This is a great thing that we could do from our industry to understand where we stand. So thank you so much for sharing. And Mila, could you show us a quick screenshot of what the survey looks like so that those that click on it know that they are in the right place? I think you had it open at some point. Yes. So all you have to do is click next. And when you click next, you'll see some of the questions and if you click in there, you'll see. Very easy to do and you should be able to finish it very quickly. It's very straightforward. So thank you very much, Mila. And I was telling Alison backstage that I really wanted to talk about gala. I've heard about gala for so long and this year it sounds like, and it feels like and it's spoken within multilingual that I'll be attending. And I did not expect that, but I'm very excited about it. Valencia, like, we like to say it internally.
What can we expect? Alison, how? And actually, first tell me why Valencia? Why Valencia? I'm latino, so Latinos, we say Valencia, but why Valencia? Where did Valencia come from? And then we can get going there.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: You know, how we choose our location is it's not rocket science, but we like to look for cities that have something, some cultural elements. They're close to an easy airport. They are warm, especially this time of year, if possible. That's not always possible. We had snow in Dublin last year and something interesting about the business community in that city. And so Valencia is a city of innovation. They're attracting a lot of startups, they're attracting a lot of tech companies.
Some people are calling it the next Barcelona, and it has really great and rich culture as well. So it combines old and new, which is cool.
And it should be really nice and warm in April as well.
And as you know, I think we alternate between North America and Europe each year. So this is a little bit different. I suppose technically we should be back in North America this year because we were in Dublin last year, but things got a little bit crazy with the pandemic.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: All right, all right. And I know topics are a thing, right? And everyone got a little sick by the end of last year of talking about artificial intelligence. And we were having an editorial meeting yesterday at multilingual, and I asked a question. I said, hey, you know, when are we going to be focusing, perhaps one of our issues in artificial intelligence? And one of our editors said, well, Eddie, to be honest, we've been working on mostly artificial intelligence in all of our issues this year. So that's just to preface the question, what are we going to be talking about? What are we going to be seeing when we go to gala this year?
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Shocker. Shocker. We're going to be talking about AI through a lot of different lenses and from a lot of different angles. And one thing I'll say about this conference, there is a lot of content. I think we have something like 40 hours over two days of content. We're going to have. I mean, people complain to us when we have too many concurrent sessions because they can't attend everything, but we're going to have a lot of concurrent sessions.
Side note, we're going to record things, and you can, for pretty inexpensive, buy the recordings package, and then your whole team can have access, not just you. So you're not gonna be able to attend everything.
We have different tracks that focus on interpreting technology, business models.
I'm not looking at it right now, so from the top of my head, I can't name them all, but they will all be looking kind of through slightly different lenses. At the AI topic, we do a lot of other things at the gala conference, too, because it's the association's annual event, our annual business meeting. So we let our special interest groups get together. We get some of our committees together. We'll have a board meeting. We'll have our annual general member meeting. And then, of course, we do a ton of social, because this group, this industry loves to socialize. So we do a welcome reception, and we do a closing happy hour, and we do a big blowout dinner, you know, on the middle of the middle night. So tons of networking, lots of learning opportunities, and we have a ton of registrations already. This is. We're breaking record. So I don't know if we'll get to 500, but we're already, I think close to 400 with, you know, something like seven weeks to go. So it's going to be a big conference as well.
And what else can I tell you? Oh, cultural events we love at gala. We feel like that's one of our differentiators, let's say, is that we love to introduce people or give people delegates the opportunity to engage in the local culture. So we do a pre conference tour, a post conference tour, and then on the closing night, Tuesday night, we've organized two different tours. Like, you can go learn to make paella and tortilla espanola, and we can have another event where they have tapas and music. So we try to engage with the locale, you know, and give everybody a little flavor of the culture and the locale, too. So that was a lot. In a nutshell.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: That is great. That's great. It gives us a really good sense, Mil, if you can also share a little bit of the website so that we can have a sense of, like, if we are deciding to go, and I know you're breaking records, some of us have never been there, so for some of us, it's a little different.
What would you recommend, even for those that have attended previous galas, what would you recommend we do before in preparation for the event?
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Well, I suppose it depends on what your objective is like. If your objective is to learn and be exposed to a lot of concepts, then study the program. And, Mila, you've actually gone like, we're working on a bug with our menu, so this is just our homepage. Everybody is going to want to go to the conference menu, but when you go down to tablet size, we have a problem. Anyway, you want to study the program and you want to see what you have on offer and probably begin to kind of flag the things that are interesting to you.
And so if learning is your objective and you want to try to, like, stay up, you know, stay, keep pace with the trends and understand what's coming next, then study the program, and it's all posted.
If, like, social and Biz Dev is your primary goal, then you're going to want to get into the event app. We open it about two or three weeks before the event, and you'll want to start networking and looking to see who else is going to be there and making connections and setting up meetings and appointments.
So I think that the other thing that I'll say is that we understand that Valencia's having another big event right after our event. I mean, like a citywide event. And so if you have waited to make hotel reservations anywhere, don't wait any longer because the prices are gonna just go up and up. So I think our room block is we might be sold out on a couple of nights, but there's lots of other places to stay as well. Just don't wait.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: All right. And in terms of your expectations, and you've done this a bunch of times, what's new for you? What are you expecting that this will bring to the organization that you've not seen before?
[00:17:07] Speaker B: That's a good question and hard to answer, I would say. You know, we try to do a little innovation every year, so we don't bake from the same recipe, let's say. And we try to tweak some things. So one thing that we're, the program committee is working on right now is something called a solution room, where we're going to get some experts together and people can come to the solution room and bring their challenge and kind of workshop some things together. So that's something new this year and it's still in development, I think. One other thing that we're bringing this is not new. It's like old. And so it's new again, is one on one speed networking. So in the olden days, when I first started at gala, we used to do one on one speed networking, which looks a lot like speed dating. You sit across the table from a person, you make an exchange. One person gets up, moves to the next seat.
We're bringing that back as a pre conference activity Sunday. You can sign up for one on one speed networking. There's a waitlist right now, but I think we're going to be able to accommodate people. And then we also do our regular speed networking, which is like a one to many. You sit at a round table, everybody makes introductions.
So what's old is new again. And then what else? We're kind of. So one thing that's different is that we took away the last half day. We used to do a half day on Wednesday, but it was problematic for a lot of people to be out of the office for that long and also challenging to arrange travel on a day like that. So we're going to finish on Tuesday evening. And like I told you, we organize these cultural events that I think are going to be pretty cool.
Another thing that's not new, but is also worth noting is that we're going to be hosting the clear global TWB fundraiser again, which Andrew Hickson from Ludeo always coordinates. And there's a fun theme this year. You have to plan your outfit now. So we'll be doing that Tuesday night also.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: I'm very excited. I like dressing up. So that will be a thing. That will be a thing for me.
Thank you very much for taking the time. Alison, is there anything you'd like to tell members of the association and those that are attending? Those that are confirmed? They've booked their flights, they booked their hotel, and they were just excited to get the days passed really quickly so that we can make it to Spain.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: I mean, you know, this is not interesting or novel advice, but plan ahead. Plan ahead. Remember your business cards. If you still use business cards, get them printed, bring them. Think about your agenda and your schedule and what you're interested in and kind of begin to make a plan about that. And then if you want to sign up for any of these additional activities or you want to attend something on the pre conference day, just plan ahead. So it's like being prepared. Like, we all try to be fantastic.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Alison, for your time to date, and we hope to have you with us in the future.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about, you can tell I love this event. It's a really great event and we all look forward to it. It's a lot of work, but we just, we love it. We love getting everybody together and we.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: Also love to hear about and participate in it. Thank you so much, Alison, for being with us today to our wonderful audience. Thank you for your participation. Remember, of course, that you can catch up on more interviews, news and press releases by visiting multilingual.com. This has been the weekend review. Remember to leave your comments and questions below and subscribe to our channels for more language.
