Day: May 14, 2006

At the “Delivering the New PR” conference on Friday I met with Simon Merrick from Zest. He raised a really interesting question: are there currently any services that provide “real-time” blog translation.

For example, if you have a client with a blog (I’m assuming it meets all the usual criteria!) and you have key audiences in foreign language markets it would make a lot of sense to be able to publish those those observations in other languages.

A quick check around the event confirmed no one was aware of this service being currently offered.

The requirements as I see them:

1) Fast translation services – no point having a major time lag
2) Ability to translate personal (as opposed to business or technical) writing style
3) Ability to publish the foreign language blog
4) Capability to monitor the blog and translate any comments back into English
5) Swiftly re-translate responses to the comments.

Obviously there are many localization firms around the world, but is anyone providing high quality blog translation services?

If you’ve any thoughts, suggestions or recommendations I’d love to hear them.

Sounds like a great idea.

It was absolutely great to catch up with the crew at the London leg of the University of Sunderland’s “Delivering the New PR” series. The conference had over 150 delegates in the Marriot Regent’s Park Hotel and the feedback was very positive!

As well as catching up with Neville, Elizabeth, Philip, Chris and Nicky and her crew, it was also great to finally meet David Phillips. Unfortunately Stuart Bruce was unable to attend due to a personal emergency on Friday morning. We missed his presence at the event, and as a result, myself, Neville and Philip manfully tried to do justice to his presentation on Business blogging. I think it went OK, but clearly didn’t have the impact of Stuart doing it himself.

There were loads of great questions at the event (see post above) which suggests many in our profession are doing some serious thinking about how these new tools can enhance the services we provide to our clients – even if there’s limited activity actually underway today.

It seems there’s been some interest in expanding the conference series so we’ll wait and see and as always Nicky and her team did a great job!

Unfortunately things went downhill once I reached Heathrow…

Update:As usual Neville and Philip have comprehensive and insightful posts on the event.

 

It all appeared to be going so well.  The “Delivering the New PR” conference was a success (based on the feedback from the attendees I talked to). 

I took a cab to Heathrow with Neville and Elizabeth in plenty of time for my flight. We dropped them off at Terminal 4, and as we were making our way to Terminal 1 a thunder storm hit the Heathrow area.  I assumed this would delay flights in and out – but I didn’t realize by how much. 

I was due to fly out on a BMI flight to Dublin at 19.10 however it quickly became apparent that it was delayed.  We were still sitting there at 22.30…. 

In that entire time there was only one BMI announcement and that was to inform us the flight had been delayed until 19.50.  The rest of the delay updates only came when passengers actually walked up to the BMI desk at the gate and asked for the latest information -  which BMI kindly shared – and luckily those passengers were kind enough to pass on the message. 

At 22.30 they announced that our flight was cancelled due to “operational” issues.  Chaos ensued with passengers flooding the desk, we all had to register there and then, go back out to the departure atrium, queue at the BMI ticket desk for over an hour.  There was then another half an hour waiting for a bus to take us to the hotel and then about three quarters of an hour checking into the hotel.  I finally go to my bed at around 01.50. 

A long day…. 

PS: The BMI staff I dealt with were pleasant and efficient, however my complaint centres on why there wasn’t clear and regular public communication regarding the status of the flight? In fairness to Aer Lingus – who had similar delays – they made a point of providing regular updates on the progress of all their delayed flights.  It’s better to say too much than too little particularly when people are stuck in an area that resembles something like a blitz shelter.