CEO ROUNDTABLE
ALC (The Association of Language Companies) and Boostlingo are pleased to announce a CEO Roundtable event hosted at the Boostlingo offices in San Francisco, California on September 10th, 2019. This event presents a unique opportunity for Language Industry leaders from around the region and beyond to meet and discuss important topics relevant to the growth of the industry. The CEO Roundtable brings together Executives, thought leaders and practitioners with similar interests and provides a forum for presenting and discussing new ideas and business activities. The event also provides a unique opportunity to discuss and tackle current issues important to language services companies or more broadly impacting the language services and language technologies sector.
MODERATOR:
Dieter Runge ~ VP Global Business Development – BOOSTLINGO
Dieter has built a career in the language services and language technology industry since 2001 and has held a number of different roles in research, development, operations, sales, business development and marketing across the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Most recently, Dieter co-founded San Francisco based technology start-up Boostlingo. Boostlingo develops cost effective software solutions for the language services industry and has released the next generation interpretation management and interpretation communications platform for on-demand Over-the-Phone and Video Remote interpretation delivery and for onsite interpreter scheduling and management. Dieter holds a B.A. in Film and Television from San Jose State University in California and an M.Ed. in Educational Psychology from McGill University in Montreal.
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS
NOW WHAT CALIFORNIA? THE POST AB5 WORLD FOR LANGUAGE SERVICE PROFESSIONALS
On May 29th, 2019 the AB5 “Gig Bill” passed the California Assembly “Without exemption for Language Service Professionals” – We would be surprised to hear from any CA based LSC’s who haven’t been tracking this development over the past few years – many ALC members have been engaged with their representatives in DC are aware of this legislation and its impact to our industry and have actively been lobbying to ensure that congress add important exemptions for business continuity of the professional language services sector.
The repercussions for language service companies and freelance language professionals alike are far reaching. We will apportion a part of our morning session of the CEO Roundtable to discuss “Now What?!”, a question that we’re pretty sure all California based Language Companies are asking and of course, we would be remiss not to point out that as California votes so often does the rest of the country. LSC managers across the US have been cautiously optimistic that there would be a class exemption ruling – this was clearly not the case. There are at least a dozen or more US States who have been actively watching this legislation as guidance for moving forward with similar legislation. The dominoes are stacking – what can we do about it? What should we do about it? What are you going to do about it? Let’s discuss!
UPDATE ON THE STATE OF SIGN LANGUAGE INTERPRETING CERTIFICATION
– RID CEO: What’s the latest with the RID CEO Search process? What’s the expected timeframe? What should we expect?
– RID Testing process and the CDI (Certified Deaf Interpreters testing situation) aspect.
– RID Long term plans: Financial health, diverse interpreting pool, expansion of education aspect to improve the numbers of interpreters available to the deaf and HOH communities
– Alternative certification options: BEI
SPEAKER:
ROBIN HORWITZ
Robin Horwitz co-founded Convo Communications in 2009, with three other Deaf individuals. Early in the process of creating Convo, the team successfully recruited a highly competent interpreter to interpret thousands of critical conversations with hearing individuals over a span of four years. The presence of effective communication access was a huge game-changer.
Robin credits the company’s success to investing in the quality of interpreters, which appealed to a consumer market long subjected to sub-par interpreting services. Filling this gap allowed Convo to experience incredible initial growth and created a powerful form of communication access for both the Deaf and hearing communities. This experience led Robin to a profound realization that if all Deaf people had access to communication access through qualified interpreters, they would have equal opportunities to create life-changing innovations for everybody, both Deaf and hearing. In all, Robin brings to the table 17 years of experience in the interpreting industry, where his bottom line – quality of communication – has not changed.
Robin is also part of the Deaf Owned/Operated Agencies coalition where they share the common agenda of pushing the deaf owned/operated agencies to the front of the sign language interpreting industry. Currently Robin lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California with his wife Maureen Klusza and 7 year old daughter, Shoshannah.
FROM SILICON VALLEY TO CHINA – NEW GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES AND VENTURES
We are delighted to host a number of China Business experts to speak on developments in the Language Service industry and share opportunities that exist between the US and China. The afternoon sessions of the CEO Roundtable will pivot around topics relating to resourcing challenges and opportunities for LSC’s looking to do business in China and the Asia Pacific region and also on strategic business process and protocols for doing business with and in China.
SPEAKERS:
FRANK WEI
Frank Zhonghe Wei is Founder and CEO of Master Translation Services (MTS), a language company headquartered in Xiamen, China. He founded MTS in 2000 and manages its growth into a company with over 100 in-house linguists and seven branch offices in mainland China, Taiwan and USA. MTS ranks among top Asian LSPs. Frank is a Council Member of Translators Association of China (TAC), Vice Chairman of TAC Translation Service Committee, and President of Xiamen Translator Association.
STEVE CHU
Steve Chu is a veteran in the localization industry with 20 years of diversified management experience in general management, sales, marketing, and operations. With significant international business experience in Asia, the United States, and Europe, Steve founded GoAP with a simple belief–that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. And that idea is GoAP.
After spending more than a decade in the financial communications industry managing Asia operations, US operations, technology, product development, and marketing, Steve is the founder and President of Treehouse Strategy with the purpose of using big data and business analytics to drive business growth and help companies get to the next level.
Through Treehouse Strategy, Steve and his associates as well as partners have helped their clients develop their sales and marketing strategies, develop new customers, expand into new markets, streamline operations, as well as implement business and technology solutions. Steve received his B.A. from Columbia University and his M.A. in communication from Iowa State University