Industry Associations are SO 1990′s

Being new to the land of localization, I cannot say that I have any personal regrets that the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) has shut down. I have read a number of blog posts about it and, based on what I’ve read, people don’t seem to be particularly surprised.

Of particular interest to me is Renato Beninatto’s post called Of LISA’s Insolvency and Other Events. Renato is one of the foremost experts in the localization field. He is well-known, outspoken, and forward thinking. So, when Renato states that “LISA had become irrelevant,” I think stand up and take notice.

Renato ties the decline of LISA to the rise of specialty events such as Apps Go Global and Worldware. Where LISA charged a large membership fee to join and attend the events, the specialty events do not require membership of any type.

I find what Renato says to be compelling.

In this day of online community, where social media is essentially free to all who want to participate, are the days of paid-for communities, such as industry associations, over? Why should I pay to belong to a community when I have plenty of people in my free online community whom I can access wherever and whenever I want?

In order for industry associations to remain relevant, they need to provide something more than what I can get online at a series of webinars, and a compilation of meet-and-greets. Because taken together, the online twitter community, LinkedIn groups, Facebook pages, combined with the plethora of webinars, and the more than occassional meet-and-greet provide all of the same benefits as paying for membership in an industry association and paying big money to attend conferences.

And, I get to sleep in my own bed.

Discuss
Blog · March 3, 2011

http://twitter.com/IamTimSteele Tim Steele

Hmm, very interesting. And I agree. So how do we tell our bosses that we’re “following the guidelines most people on Facebook use” vs. “we’re adopting the standards from the XYZ Standards Association”? That has been the “safe” answer for so long. I’m wondering if we’ll see the rise of new, free, social media savy, online organizations that become the “standard” for the competing viewpoints out there today. The one advantage that associations had (or implied that they had) is that they were the ONE place you could go for THE standards. While pushing forward to the leading edge is great, it’s somewhat comforting to find the baseline without having to attend all those meet-and-greets. To stay relevant, we individually need to dig in, learn, and create. But it sure was nice to have A place to go to get started. We may each have our own style guides, but it’s been nice having the Chicago Manual of Style as a basis and arbitrator.

http://www.contentrules.com Val Swisher

Interesting point, Tim. I hadn’t really thought about that. I think that there are already industry community forums where people can communicate effectively. In fact, the Chicago Manual of Style has a community site where people can exchange ideas. Perhaps there will be more of this type of thing in the future, as we sort out the good vs. the not-so-good in the social media space.

Anonymous

Well, there is an upside and a downside to social media being public and free. The good is that you can easily reach a huge amount of people. But that also means that other more important connections are less obvious.

The one thing about a paid community is exclusivity and purpose. The people who are there really do want to be there and have a purpose of being there, which is the only reason that they pay. If exclusive communities are free, then anyone might come along and be like “hey, this looks cool. I think I’m going to sign up because it can’t hurt.” This will result in pollution in the enthusiasm and motivation of the people in the community.

http://www.contentrules.com Val Swisher

You make a very interesting point, Max. I recently joined a group for specifically that reason. It is a fairly large group of CEOs. CEOs don’t “hang out” together in groups online or using social media. So, membership in that group was worth the price of admission. If an association wants to retain or increase its membership, and it is relying on exclusivity, the people in the group need to be largely unavailable to me elsewhere. Interesting way of looking at it.

http://www.sdicorp.com/Resources/Blog/articleType/AuthorView/authorID/24/lkunz.aspx Larry Kunz

Industry associations can do a lot to define and advance a profession — for example by setting standards (as Tim mentioned) and defining certification programs.

But here’s the dilemma: many — probably most — potential members don’t consider that to be a very persuasive value proposition. Instead, they join the association to keep informed and to build a network. When I joined STC in 1983 that was a pretty good value proposition. Today, as you’ve pointed out, I can do those things online. Not as well, maybe, but considering what it costs me (nothing), not too badly.

Associations are in a tough position: they need to convince people they still have value, while their true value often isn’t what the people are looking for.

http://www.contentrules.com Val Swisher

Thanks for your thoughts, Larry. I agree. I think Max has an interesting point about exclusivity, but that, by itself, is also not a good enough value prop for me to spend that kind of money (at least not when it comes to the current industry associations in our profession).

I think that the associations really need to rethink their purpose, their offers, and their costs to remain viable in today’s uber-connected world.

RickSchaefer

Please don’t abandon your association just yet. The model has definitely changed. Many association directors have told me their biggest challenge is keeping members engaged. They know their added value grows stale very quickly these days. Associations are also handicapped by small budgets and a shrinking volunteer base. They are in head to head competition with well funded, spin controlled events and communities .

Some of the biggest industry gatherings are now nothing more than huge marketing events for megabrands Look at the big events last year in San Francisco, OpenWorld, VMworld, Dreamforce, and the RSA security show. While independent associations have many drawbacks, do we really want “objective” industry events being run by Oracle, VMware, Salesforce, and RSA? How can a small, regional association compete with the glamor of Bill Clinton, Neil Young, and Will.i.am? (all part of Dreamforce 2010)

Every time an association goes dark, we lose an independent voice and give even more credence to those companies who can afford to buy our attention.

http://www.contentrules.com Val Swisher

I think that many of the association events have dwindled down to a group of like-minded people, saying the same things to each other over and over again. I don’t see a lot of controversy, stirring of the pot, and the other types of activities that would lead me to believe that the associations are making a enough of difference in the industry to warrant my membership dues. The demise of LISA is part and parcel of exactly this situation.

I think there are pockets of extremely interesting people (for example, Ann Rockley and Joanne Hackos), who have new viewpoints, paradigms, and information to share. They are operating on the leading edge of our industry. I find it fascinating that these folks now run their own conferences (including Jack Molisani’s LavaCon), independent of any industry associations. The number of speakers and the attendance at these private events has been growing. Ann Rockley told me that attendance at the Intelligent Content Conference has grown wildly over the past 3 years. And, while I have to pay a fee to attend the conference, I don’t have to join an organization for an even larger fee for little or no value.

http://twitter.com/martin_wun martin_wun

Industry associations provide more networking opportunities and conferences. LISA had it in their name that they were primarly a standards setting organisation and we definitely do need standards bodies. LISA’s demise might have something to do with the organisation not focusing on this core activity that much anymore in recent years. They did provide us with TMX, but TMX exists in many different levels and versions and hasn’t fully delivered on the promise of lossless TM exchange. How about GMX with its various flavours? How many tools are actually using it? How about TBX (which is way to complicated for daily use)?
LISA could have concentrated much more on making the existing standards rock-solid. In this regard, LISA should have been looking to the Unicode consortium as a model, for instance.

LISA have also missed the way into the cloud. We have a number of web-based TM technologies competing today (TDA, Wordfast, Globalsight etc.), but no standards for the web services APIs that are used to access these systems and applications. In a similar manner, we will probably soon see web-based terminology databases (and Wiktionary might provide the foundation for these). Again, this is an area where LISA as an independent organisation could have been leading the way by defining API standards and working with tools developers to implement them.

It is a pity to see LISA disappear and I do hope that another organisation will continue to maintain and develop the exchange standards. Because we need them badly, especially in an interconnected localization world that is more and more moving into the cloud.

Cheers,

Martin
(shamelessly cross-posting from my blog http://www.martinwunderlich.com

http://www.contentrules.com Val Swisher

Thanks for your input, Martin. I agree that a standards organization really needs to focus on standards. And that the lack of standards in the translation industry is truly hampering cross-functionality and more growth.

I think you make an interesting point about the growth of cloud-based technologies. I agree that more and more companies are moving into the cloud. Having a set of standard APIs for these services is yet another example of the need for standardization.

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