5 years ago, localization & LQA specialists from various game publishers met in Berlin and started the GloWorkshop series. It was supposed to destill the experience of that helpful joined coffee or cigarette break you had with a colleague and remembered when returning from busy Localization World into recurring day-long events. As our idea for how a game industry hosted event for localization/QA professionals continuously evolved over the years, so did our aspirations in terms of the range game localization topics we wanted to cover.
Participants cherish the openness possible when sharing their successes as well as failures with another, learn about the application of new industry technologies and may even be able to use that broadened perspective to reassess their challenges back at home. That level of intimacy comes at the price of limited access, something we feel will not change in order to keep up the spirit of the event.
Over the last couple of years, I have met many enthusiastic creators and developers of localization tools & services that not only were very happy to showcase their new software or latest feature, but also consistently kept an open ear for criticism or in part even worked on purely experimental ideas – all without having the motivation of a sales opportunity. I have long been wondering how to foster that creative synergy and came to the conclusion that similar to how it happened at GloW, it might be possible by simply swapping the set of playground rules these dialogues usually take place between developers and the users of their tools & services. And where is that magical act supposed to happen?
You guessed right, at Loclab!
Loclab webinars are all-digital events and will therefore make full use of the fact that all participants are joining with computers.
Each web-session will combine a set of different online services and make them accessible to registered participants on the day of the event.
- Two separate video streams (both embedded to the web portal):
- The first will be a remote desktop session for the guest to showcase solutions and provide on-hands examples or visualizations to any questions/topics. This stream will be provided via Zoom and can also be joined via the their client/apps.
- The second will be an augmenting video cast of the host for showing additional information, speaker webcam’s etc.
- a Slack channel for collaboration
Developer guests will be invited based on user suggestions that can be submitted on loclab.net together with suggestions on possible themes. As soon as a session has been scheduled it will be announced via newsletter and interested users can register as participants, as well as submit any specific questions they have in regards to the tool/services so the guest can prepare for the session accordingly.
Over the years, many tool/solution providers have become staples of the localization industry and have demonstrated their ability to evolve and adapt by adding new features to their product. Because of this constant development, it makes sense to reevaluate them at different points of time and from different thematic perspectives.
Loclab is supposed to provide a similar immediacy to an in-person meeting which is why registration is required for any participant in order to join the private web-session. While this means participants will know the identity of anyone similar as you would in a physical room, no email addresses or other contact information will be shared by the host, leaving it up to each party to approach another.
While Loclab provides no immediate sales opportunities, it offers plenty of opportunity for developers to demonstrate applicable solutions of their product to real-life challenges of the user.
