Vol. 78 June, 2007
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The Word on Web
The World Wide Web has had a dramatic effect on each of us as it touches numerous aspects of our business and personal lives. Dedicated to the art and science of Web globalization one expert organization appeared on the landscape in 2000 and has prominently emerged as a leading web expert. Byte Level Research helps marketing and Web teams create web sites that truly speak to the world, across languages and borders. We are pleased to share the insights of Byte Level Research President and Chief Analyst John Yunker.
Technology advances on the web and many other fronts continue to build momentum and impact our business. The bottom line remains the same - how do we provide maximum value at maximum efficiency, simultaneously retaining a very “human” corporate culture? In January McElroy created a new executive position designed to ensure that long term vision, customer focus, and IT innovations are strategically aligned. Meet VP of Strategy Bob Donaldson in this month’s staff profile. His business philosophies and self effacing humor make this profile a delightful one. As talented as Bob is, he is just quirky enough to fit right in at McElroy.
Onward!
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The state of web globalization today
An interview with Byte Level Research’s John Yunker
McElroy Translation recently had the privilege of interviewing a top web globalization consultant about the state of web globalization today, and where it is headed. For E-Buzz readers unfamiliar with who Byte Level Research is and what they do—Byte Level researches hundreds of websites on a regular basis to pinpoint what makes a global web site truly successful and shares this information through reports, benchmark services, and the monthly publication: Global by Design. Their goal is to help marketing and Web teams create Web sites that truly speak to the world, across languages and borders.
McElroy Translation: Your website says Byte Level Research started in 2000. How has the climate of U.S. companies doing business globally changed since then? Did the end of the dot com boom have an impact on how the importance of web globalization was perceived?
John Yunker: During the dot com years, Web globalization was hot, but prematurely so. I say prematurely because Internet penetration globally - particularly broadband penetration - was still in its early stages.
After the dot com bust, Web globalization spending virtually froze for a period as companies took a much-needed reality break. But over the past two years, companies have been spending robustly – and, thankfully, realistically on Web globalization. If anything, most companies are now too cautious in their Web globalization investments, running the risk of missing out on opportunities in many emerging markets.
What we are now witnessing on a large scale are companies transforming themselves from “domestic companies serving foreign markets” to “global companies serving local markets.” Many companies now generate more than half of their revenues from outside of their domestic markets and the Internet has played a large role in this evolution.
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“The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.”
~Bill Gates
“National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway.”
~Tim May
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Bob Donaldson, Vice President—Strategy
We recently announced the addition of Bob to the McElroy executive team with a formal press release in our April E-Buzz.
However, as most of our readers know, our featured employee corner of E-Buzz is a less formal invitation to get to know some of the “real” people here at McElroy. The editors of E-Buzz were impressed with the info from the “real” Bob Donaldson, coupled with his extensive resume. We hope you will find the “real” Bob as interesting as we did.
When Bob isn’t slaying dragons in the corporate IT world, he runs, reads, travels and follows baseball.
Bob recently took up long distance running and finished his first half-marathon in 1:48. He says, “The training gives me quiet time to think and also helps build a habit of persistence. As with long-distance running, the difference between success (meeting the customer’s expectations) and failure often boils down to persistence."
Bob reads widely and voraciously … history, theology, classics, medieval texts and spy novels. He served on the national board of the Association of Classical Christian Schools and was a co-founder of Regents School of Austin, an ACCS school which teaches students the tools of life-long learning that have served him well.
Bob loves travel and international cultures. He has lived in Germany (twice), studied in both Germany and the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia), and traveled on business or pleasure to Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Russia (and the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Estonia & Latvia), Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Mexico.
Bob is also an avid baseball fan. Do not expect to start a short conversation with him about the Astros. He is especially interested in following the minor leagues and typically sees the Round Rock Express several times a season. He also “collects” baseball field visits as his travel schedule allows.
Bob’s professional achievements
In the process of getting to know the “real” Bob Donaldson, we also uncovered an impressive list of professional achievements that bear mention in this month’s employee profile.
Many McElroy employees are asked the question: “What languages do you speak?” Most of us who are not translators are proficient in at least one other language, but Bob commands fluency in three: German, Russian and Czech, and can handle basic tourist phrases in several more (Italian, Flemish, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, Rumanian). He can also read most Slavic languages as well as Latin, Old English and some Old Icelandic. Friends tell him he needs an “emergency interrupt” button when he get started on historical and comparative linguistics. What’s more, his international business experience encompasses substantially more than a conference in Toronto, and a visit to an office in Singapore—Bob has participated in numerous business development, solution delivery and management consulting engagements in Europe (Germany, UK, Russia, Belgium), the Far East (Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore), Australia and Latin America (Mexico, Brazil) including an expatriate assignment in Germany.
Combining his extensive knowledge of languages and business, Bob has built an impressive list of technical titles as well, including: Software Architect, Project Manager, SW Development Director, VP Engineering, and VP Professional Services. Bob has provided technical and business consulting expertise to many Fortune 500 companies before coming to McElroy.
Where the “real” Bob gets his business insight
Bob cites Dilbert and his manager as his favorite sources of business insight. He says, “I often laugh at myself as I see a reflection of my foibles; seeing the humorous side of serious issues (and acknowledging my own blind spots or weaknesses) helps build mutual trust and teamwork. The title of a Jim Collins essay on leadership, ’The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve’, describes the type of leadership I aspire to."
We think that Bob’s educational and professional experience will offer McElroy a unique perspective on the challenges ahead as we adapt to the turbulent market environment currently surrounding language services.
Bob understands first hand the challenges of doing business in a multi-lingual and cross-cultural environment. As we help our customers do business globally, his understanding will help us bridge the gap between business need and technology promise. Whether negotiating a custom application development contract in Australia, or the details of an environmental services joint venture with a former Soviet research laboratory, Bob reminds us that the real challenges are with true meaning behind the words. As McElroy extends its reach to become “globally local,” this experience will help us build solid, mutually beneficial relationships.
Anniversaries
McElroy Translation appreciates the business of the following clients and announces the anniversaries of these client relationships:
15 years
10 years
- Texas Department of Agriculture
- International Paper
- Glaxo Wellcome Inc - Drug Surveillance
5 years
- Procter & Gamble Far East, Inc
- Cri International
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Doing Business in Indonesia
Overview
Indonesia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2006 was US$364 billion (US$960 bn PPP). In 2006, nominal per capita GDP was US$1,640, and per capita GDP PPP was US$4,752 (International Dollars). The services sector is the economy’s largest and accounts for 45.3% of GDP (2005). This is followed by industry (40.7%) and agriculture (14.0%). However, agriculture employs more people than other sectors, accounting for 44.3% of the 95 million-strong workforce. This is followed by the services sector (36.9%) and industry (18.8%). Major industries include petroleum and natural gas, textiles, apparel, and mining. Major agricultural products include palm oil, rice, tea, coffee, spices, and rubber.
Indonesia’s main export markets are Japan (22.3% of Indonesian exports in 2005), the United States (13.9%), China (9.1%), and Singapore (8.9%). The major suppliers of imports to Indonesia are Japan (18.0%), China (16.1%), and Singapore (12.8%). In 2005, Indonesia ran a trade surplus with export revenues of US$83.64 billion and import expenditure of US$62.02 billion. The country has extensive natural resources, including crude oil, natural gas, tin, copper, and gold. Indonesia’s major imports include machinery and equipment, chemicals, fuels, and foodstuffs.
The official language is Bahasa Indonesia, although many government officials and business people speak English. The official unit of currency in Indonesia is the rupiah, which is divided into 100 sen. (Credit cards are really only useful in large hotels, restaurants and foreign companies, so it is inadvisable to rely solely on plastic money in Indonesia. Travellers’ cheques and foreign currency, particularly US dollars, can be easily exchanged at banks across the country. If you are travelling beyond large Indonesian centres, try to attend to your banking before you go, or carry a supply of cash for currency exchanges.)
Post and Telecommunications
- The postal service in Indonesia is quite efficient, particularly from large centres such as Jakarta or Yogyakarta.
- International calls can be made from Wartel (Warung Telekomunikasi) offices across the country.
Business Etiquette
- As in most Asian countries, business cards are very useful for making introductions. Never pass or receive cards with the left hand, as this hand is considered unclean.
- General forms of address in Indonesia are “Pak” for a man and “Ibu” for a woman.
- It is conventional to give a light bow of the head when shaking hands or taking one’s leave.
- Gifts, though small, are frequently given.
- Gifts are not opened when given. This practice shows the recipient is gracious, not greedy.
- The most important thing to remember when selecting gifts for Indonesian people is that Indonesia is a Muslim country and therefore, alcohol and products made from pigskin are unsuitable.
- Be particularly careful when selecting gifts for Indonesian women, as certain items of clothing or cosmetics may not be suitable for devout Muslims.
- Always take care to respect Muslim religious conventions. Although most Indonesians are Muslims, Indonesia is not an Islamic state and allows freedom of worship to all religions. Indonesia also contains large Hindu and Christian minorities.
- Always avoid pork and alcohol, as these products are not consumed by Muslims.
- Avoid lunch appointments during the holy Ramadan fasting month. This month is calculated according to the lunar calender and varies from year to year.
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SxSW interactive and global business
Rainy Day
The SxSW Interactive Festival has been coming of age the last few years, and the March 2007 Festival, themed “Making Ideas Real,” boasted several panels and speakers focused on real-world applications of technology and emerging trends to watch. Keynote speaker Will Wright expanded on the theme by stating that “Technology is an extension of the human body/expression. The most important things computers do for us is extend our imaginations. The computer is becoming a tool of self expression through websites, blogs, etc. and paradigm shifts are hitting us more and more frequently over time.”
A dramatic shift in the focus of SxSW Interactive is the impact of Web 2.0 as a platform for collaboration technologies such as wikis, social networking technologies and effective machine to machine communication and many of the SxSW Interactive events focused on Web 2.0 topics. In the panel “Emerging Social and Technology Trends,” the four pillars of Web 2.0 were defined as technologies that support social interaction, enable and encourage user participation, lead to an enhanced user experience (such as rating and tagging options) and are characterized by open access to data.
The “Convergence Culture” speech by Henry Jenkins defined Web 2.0 as social community that works together to solve conceptual problems by remixing content. Wikipedia, probably the best known wiki, stands as a monument to participatory culture with its open process by which knowledge is produced and made available to the public. From a business perspective there are valid concerns that intellectual property issues are at odds with an expanding participatory culture.
Population and demographic trends influencing the social and technological forces shaping the emergence of Web 2.0 range from extremely local advances allowing us to connect data to where we live at micro level to the expansion of instant collaboration with global users. The technological infrastructure of the “Global South,” essentially comprised of Africa, India and China, is limited in many cases to Internet access via phone lines which is an important factor in designing Web 2.0 sites since the vast majority of future audiences and consumers will originate in these regions.
How to harvest the potential of customer interfaces to take advantage of collaborative technologies was explored in the panels “World Domination via Collaboration,” which included a lively debate on best practices for opening your web portal to customer comments and “Virtual Teaming: Collaboration Across Time and Space,” exploring the challenges of a 24/7 work environment comprised of co-workers you may never meet or even talk to in real time.
The panel “Virtual Teaming: Collaborating Across Time and Space” offered an astute analysis on outsourcing, primarily to India, China and Russia. The panelists affirmed that with some searching you’ll find an extraordinarily intelligent, creative group of people with different approaches to things we’re doing and educational models like learning labs and incubators. This is a global community and it’s important to cultivate teams that work well together, and that can be especially difficult on a global scale as good communication is challenging regardless of language or time barriers.
The consensus across several of the panels is that small teams are the most effective, regardless of locale. It’s ideal to have one person from each discipline in order to originate the best ideas and products, and gain more respect for everyone’s fields and specialties. According to industry leaders like Google, communication tends to break down when the team gets larger than 12 so at that point it’s best to divide into smaller, more specialized teams to facilitate effective flow of communication.
Certainly there are no conclusive solutions to the difficulty of working on and managing a physically disparate team but emerging technologies are blurring time zones and making effective long-distance collaboration more feasible and cost-effective.
A global monolanguage/
monoculture?
(Or, what do blogs and Youtube have to do with cultural preservation?)
The writer of this article laments the coming of one or two great monocultures (such as U.S. and Chinese), and he is not the first to predict such a thing will happen. Indeed, with the acceleration of globalization, and the increase of broadband and internet access worldwide, the extinction of hundreds, if not thousands of languages and cultures seems imminent. Every other week, a news article proclaims that English will soon be the only language the world speaks, and everyone will read Harry Potter, drink Starbucks and listen to Britney Spears.
However, the evolving ideas, technologies, and even new cultures that the Internet has created are only the tip of the iceberg for how humans will choose to align, do business and communicate with each other in the future.
Indeed, in the early and mid nineties, before the commercialization of the Internet, one could find many articles [see footnotes] lamenting the death of the written word and creative mind in children, as too many Western children seemed doomed to lifetimes of passively receiving their entertainment via television.
Even up until the widespread popularity of blogs, and the introduction of Youtube, experts were announcing the death of active creativity in future generations, or calling popular resurgences in personal creativity “nostalgic.” Now, of course, so much of this has been turned on its head, and it is getting very hard to find a web site that isn’t begging you to join in a discussion, comment on its articles, and contribute your own original content.
So, what do blogs and Youtube have to do with the preservation (and creation) of distinct cultures worldwide? The evolution of the Internet is witnessing the empowerment of the user. In the next 10-20 years, almost all new Internet users will arrive as non-native English speakers, if they speak English at all, thanks to the permeation of broadband and wireless technologies into all areas of the globe, and efforts like the $100 laptop initiative are bringing more and more children in impoverished and developing parts of the world online.
In all likelihood, the Internet’s newest arrivals will likely want to know about Western culture, but they will hardly wish to remain passive observers and users of it. Like so many users worldwide--Brazilians on Orkut and Koreans on Cyworld, for instance--these new Internet users will want to leave their own personal marks on the Internet, participate in discussions with their distinct voices, and yes, bring their own unique cultures and languages into the mix.
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McElroy’s Vision Statement
Setting the industry standard in customer satisfaction
McElroy’s Mission Statement
McElroy Translation provides translation and localization services in all languages to business and government clientele enhancing their ability to compete in global markets.
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John Yunker consults with many of the world’s leading multinational companies, providing Web globalization training and benchmarking services. Over the years, he has authored a number of landmark reports on Web globalization and Web development, including 
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