Dealing with conflicts: Find the missing camel

The first short story presented by Mr. Ury in this video is fantastic.

Too often conflict comes from failure to communicate... but many times, the failure to rethink, to reevaluate what we thought were undeniable truths, to look at the situation with new eyes, does not allow us to solve conflicts.

Learn from Fish: Shoaling, Schooling and being part of a team

When a set of individuals is working together, no matter if in a specific project, a company, or a simple activity, the team members need to behave in a way that will help getting closer to the overall goal or result, still with an autonomous approach to work.

A good example of this are swarming fish groups. You probably have seen the picture of divers surrounded by thousands of fishes. When Shoaling, each and every fish is approaching the diver, but, by some kind of magic, no fish is really touching the diver in anyway. If the diver moves, the swarm moves.

How is it possible?

Actually each fish is taking care of himself. Each fish is paying focused attention to the stranger (the driver), to other fish, to the environment. The simple idea of the existence of a swarm is that the individuals gain more by being part of it than by being on their own. Still, in order for the swarm to be efficient, and also in order to continue being part of the swarm, each individual needs to take care of himself, plus needs to be in sync with the idea the swarm was established for.

I like this analogy of an efficient group of "individual individuals" working for a common goal. I believe that this is one of the keys of success in teams: members taking responsibility for the activities they decided to undertake.

But there are many other lessons we can learn from shoaling and schooling and try to adapt them to team work:

• Speed and focus, still able to react quickly to change.
• Increased efficiency: Schooling groups of fish seem to gain in hydro-dynamism. Teams need to find the way to gain from the combined effort.
• Consensus decision-making: use information from multiple sources to work towards the correct result.
• Swarm Leaders?: Actually the goal and strategy is so clear that leaders are not necessary. Swarm continue to move towards the same goal even if fish leaders are switching all the time. Be careful: the goal is NOT changing in this environment. Probably that is good strategy for an ideal manager: stating and transmitting a clear goal to the team members, motivating team members to work for that goal.

Proactivity makes you valuable

If you want to make a difference, start by looking at every possible opportunity for being proactive, being really, spontaneously, proactive in all actions and projects you are involved. The starting motion towards results needs to come from you.

Being proactive also means a willingness to find the next thing you need to do, without any need of someone else telling you.

A second very important factor of proactivity is being able to bring solutions to the problems when you need to communicate bad news.

You need to assimilate proactivity as a main behavior and way of doing things. A proactive attitude will give you an advantage for getting closer to results and solving problems. A proactive attitude will make you different and valuable.

Global Content Management Process - Why is it necessary?

Interesting IGDA Perspectives magazine. In this month issue: "Global Connections", with interesting articles on game localization.
Apart from the interesting ones :-), there is an article I wrote on the subject of Global Content Management Systems (go to page 16 for the article).

Open publication - Free publishing - More 2010

Presentations and Lectures: consider the "after delivery"

Speaking at events is a challenging, but also very fulfilling experience.

The delivery part is the more difficult one, I believe. Your are exposed "live" to the eyes of critics scrutinizing what you say or show.

Some will like it, some will not. You will have to live with it.

Some will understand what you want to share, some will completely misunderstand you and even quote you with things you never said: (Did you ever try to check what others have tweeted about your presentations? Funny exercise, but do not take it too seriously :-) )

Still, the presentation itself becomes a personal message that could go further than you think. Your presentation needs to have:

1. Content: A good one: Obvious... I know...

a. Interesting general content that the audience could take from the session and if possible apply immediately. A mixture of general content and to the point “take aways”.

b. Unified content: There needs to be a general path in our presentation; a sense of unity gives a complete different view to the audience of what is being presented. It is better to leave things out, than to add something that not completely matches the rest of the content.

c. Even if sometimes the presentation format forces us to do something different, I like preparing them like a speech. An introduction, a statement, arguments, a conclusion... (this differs of course). Something I would be capable to deliver in an "audio only" mode for instance.

2. Design:

a. Visual design of the presentation: We do not have to forget that you will have active listener, but also part of the audience that will just glance at your presentation while paying attention, or thinking of something else. Many times just having a nice image, or an interesting quote forces the attention to come back to you.

b. A second sometimes forgotten point is that many people post, use, (misuse even sometimes), and shares the presentation or ideas exposed afterwards. Some take photos, others download your full version. A unified, designed for print presentation (I always prefer to have 2 versions of the presentation: one with much less text for the actual presentation and a second one with more “readable content” to publish and share) is mandatory.

There is something that we should never forget, the exposure after the talk would normally be much, much bigger than the one at the actual delivery. If your presentation is relevant and interesting, and the forum you are presenting in is interesting by itself, I would bet for a close to 1 to 50 ratio if not more: If 100 people where present at your presentation, you could bet that it would be quoted, downloaded, etc... close to 5000 times.

c. A completely personal one: “ A Twittable presentation”. I see this more and more… you get a lot of general extra exposure by presenting content in a way that it would be easy for the audience to quote your presentation. Short clear statements better than a long argumentation. Make it easy for your audience to reproduce your message.

New Challenges in Interactive Media Localization Projects

Very interesting conference last week. If you are into interactive media localization or usability (BTW: Is usability part of localization or localization a part of usability? :-)) you cannot miss the soon to be published presentations of this I International Conference on Translation and Accessibility in Video Games and Virtual Worlds.

I presented my take on what new challenges localizers are facing in interactive media projects. I believe this does not only apply to videogames since more and more related industries are absorbing procedures, but specially the engagement driven design of their products from the interactive entertainment industries: the first one: eLearning.

Serious Games and eLearning are really merging under my point of view. At least for the topic I follow the most which is Project Management, I see more and more serious games with project management training in mind.

SEO and Localization (Localizing Search Engine Localization Strategies)

Is SEO part of your job as a localization service provider or professional?

When clients come to localization providers to localize their websites, the normal scenario is that you are asked to translate as soon as possible and as quick as possible into as many languages are spoken in the target markets the client wants to reach or serve.

The client has put lots of effort in creating a web site in their native language. Now, getting this into other languages should be quick and easy... Well, it isn't.

Too many web pages are simple translations of the original. But the real purpose of creating a web site in the first place (in the original language) could be missing in the translated version. The purpose is to attract costumers, share, build a community and sell your product, service to this new market. And a direct translation will not be enough for this. A site translation can be perfect linguistically and still not bring new clients or be appealing to a certain locale.

On being found: Being found on the internet is a matter of content. There are numerous discussions on the use of metatags, descriptions, tricks to do this and that... some do help, but the main driver is content. You have to create content that is interesting, useful and attractive to your potential costumers. Keywords are essential for search engine optimization, but repeating keywords even if those are the ones you are betting your clients will type in their search engines when looking for you, without interesting context will not get you the results you need.

On Marketing localization: When translating a website, the localizer needs to understand the target market, understand what content will drive the potential readers to their client site and adapt that message (that is why we talk about LOCALIZATION after all). Some call it Copy-writing, some transcreation (anything that does not sound like a commodity as "translation" does); but I believe all this is part of the localization profession.
I've seen it too often that when reaching the local marketing team, the translation is not what the local support, sales or marketing team was really expecting (as mentioned: even if perfect linguistically). This can be solved by opening the communication between these marketing teams and the localization professionals working on the content. Sometimes even a couple of meetings (online or live) and access to the previously existing local material could help closing this gap described.

Understanding the technical requirements: I mentioned that Content is the most important factor. Still you need to understand where that content needs to appear and how it needs to be build. Understanding the way hyperlinks work, the way metatags work, understand that text inside images is more difficult (if not impossible) to index, or the fact that unlinked pages in a site will hardly be found, are all concepts that the localization providers need to master. Understanding encodings like Unicode etc... is also an essential part of localizers job.

A few initial steps to approach the issue:

1. The client needs to Share and Communicate: Make the existing material available. Give access to the localizers to local Marketing, Sales or Support teams...the ones that will use the content
2. The localization team needs to Adapt the Copy (let's use copy here :-)) to the locale market. A real localization, not a mere translation.
3. Establish what SEO strategies were put in place in the original language site and work on the strategies that work on the local market.