I’m back (physically at least!) from the 55th annual conference of the American Translators Association in Chicago. By all measures, the conference was a great success. We had 1,842 attendees, which is our second-largest conference ever. It would take a lot to top the 2,400 attendees we had for our 50th anniversary conference in New York, but we did top San Francisco, which was the previous second-largest. With the huge volume of session proposals we received this year (I think over 400 for about 125 slots), conference organizer David Rumsey was able to winnow them down to the very best sessions, and many of the new features (translation Tool Trainings as preconference seminars, a business brainstorming mixer to replace the speed networking session, a Tool Bar where people could get 10-20 minutes of free, one-on-one tech support) were very well received. We also added comment cards to the annual meeting so that if people didn’t want to or didn’t have time to speak during the open comment time, they could still give feedback to the Board. But don’t take my word for it…watch this great highlights video and see for yourself! And if you’re wondering where/when ATA is meeting in 2015, 2016 and 2017, here’s the future conference sites page. See you in Miami next year!
You also might be interested in:
Jill Sommer’s wrapup post on attending and presenting at ATA55
Nicholas Sturtevant’s post on attending ATA55 as a newbie
Erin Rosales’ post on following ATA55 online
Jeff Alfonso’s post on the social aspects of ATA55
Thanks for sharing! I like the video you have attached with this post. Hopefully I will have chance to attend ATA conference in the near future! BTW, I have been reading your book – How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator and “stole” a lot of great tips from you. Thank you!
Thank you for an interesting glimpse of your ATA conference! I am an English-Swedish and German-Swedish translator, and I have been thinking of becoming a member for some time now. Therefore, this was very helpful. Also, it was very inspiring to see so many happy and enthusiastic colleagues! I think the concept of “Breathe, stretch and move” should be spread to translators all over the world!
Thanks for a great overview. That video really made me wish I’d been there! I’ll definitely have to try to budget it in for next year – luckily it’s not in the spring, when I’ve already got two conferences planned in.