MemoQFest – Budapeszt 2009

MemoQ developed by a Hungarian company Killgray has always been community driven. Directors of the company (Balázs Kis, István Lengyel, Gábor Ugray, and most recently Peter Reynolds) have made it their policy to supply exactly what the users of their software need. All these efforts finally culminated between 22-24 April 2009 in Budapest with MemoQFest - the first conference which attracted a host of industry experts and MemoQ users.

The conference was a great success and the numerous important developments were an additional bonus. For example, a popular vote decided that the proper pronunciation of the programme’s name was, in fact, Anglo-Saxon “Memo-Cue” rather than “Memo-Och”. Unwilling as they seemed, Kilgray management had to consent to this change by popular demand. Another important issue which was raised was the reassurance that Kilgray will remain sensitive to the requirements of the translator community when prioritising their MemoQ development roadmap. One can also not fail to mention the first MemoQ user *EVER* not only went down in history but also received a present of fine Hungarian wine during the gala dinner at the Kilgray HQ.

The workshops, which took place on April 22, provided a great platform for an exchange of ideas concerning implementing MemoQ and its functionality. They were conducted in small groups and were well balanced to suit the needs of all the participants – both freelancers and LSP’s. Doug Lawrence hosted a workshop on selling translation products and using CAT technology to sell translation, Angela Starkmann addressed the needs of freelancers and smaller LSP’s in her workshop on key issues when managing translation projects, while Gábor Ugray provided an overview to more advanced features of MemoQ facilitating terminological consistency and increasing the speed of translation.

The following conference days were filled with many great speakers and speeches. They, and that comes as no surprise, revolved mainly around MemoQ and its future development. Balázs Kis presented the upcoming TM Repository which is a new tool promising to revolutionise management of large volumes of Translation Memories.

Many presentations were in fact great eye openers like a very spontaneous and enthusiastic manifesto by Daniel Goldschmidt (accompanied by Peter Reynolds in a series of highly applauded dramatic sketches): “No one ever got fired for buying SDL”. Daniel pointed out the economical and psychological mechanisms which make people stick with leading, even if less effective and more costly, solutions shunning “upstart” players and revolutionary technologies.

Some presentations, like the one delivered by Carsten Peters, were rather controversial. The LSP part of the audience were surprised as Carsten described how a small company can in fact manage its own translation process by working directly with freelance translators. Some were very impressed but wondered whether this model was sustainable.

The official closing of the conference was most interesting. In an open discussion moderated by Jost Zetsche, the Kilgray management addressed issues and questions from the audience. Participants treated the title of this Q&A session very literally: “Everything you wanted to know about Kilgray but were afraid to ask”. So the Kilgray management had dismiss a lot of gossip,  eg. that they were going to buy SDL soon; they had to fend off users shouting out requests for experimental new features and explain what kind of nuts they prefer (don’t ask!).

A panoply of users, ranging from LSP’s to freelance translators and developers, who attended the conference, testify to an increasing popularity of MemoQ and the event provided great networking opportunities. Kilgray Management made their best effort to entertain conference attendees. After the pre-conference workshops the attendees went on a boat trip on the Danube. The first day of the conference proper (Thursday) was closed with an official dinner at Kilgray’s head office, which happens to share a patio with a very nice Apa cuku restaurant.

It was hard to resist the charm of Hungary's capital, especially when spiced up with professional and entertaining narration by István Lengyel.

On Saturday people who were fortunate enough to leave in the afternoon or evening could once more enjoy István's great storytelling skills, as he gave an express guided tour of Budapest once more, this time on foot.

The conference was definitely very successful as a milestone in MemoQ customer relationship development.