GALA 2022 was, above everything else, an opportunity for networking, collaboration and discussion of the most pressing questions of the current state of our industry. We were happy to witness the fruitful collaboration of the attendees, who stop being “competition” for a while to sit at the same table and share their passion for languages and the localization industry. The fact that our Ukrainian colleagues were present in our minds at all times is also a sign of the cohesion of our sector. We want to highlight the intervention of our Ukrainian friend Oleksandr Bondarenko, who called in from his air-raid shelter (a basement reconditioned for this purpose). It is bloodcurdling to imagine what our colleagues in Ukraine are going through and we could feel how all the attendees in the room were moved by Oleksandr’s words. In a more tangible way, everyone came together to collaborate with Translators Without Borders during the fundraiser held on Tuesday which raised more than $6,000. Thank you all for your donations!
Last but not least, this year’s conference was no exception in the tradition of offering an opportunity to discover and support young talent. BeatBabel were the proud sponsors of the Rising Star Scholarship initiative for the third consecutive year. We were delighted to meet one of the winners in person, Claudia Wiesinger, whose interest on taking the reality of the localization industry back to her students at the Universität Wien really got to us. We hope to meet Kemel Cobresle, the other winner, in the next edition of GALA. We would like to congratulate the winners once again!
In summary, GALA 2022 was the year we got back together to celebrate our industry in person, with the highlight on the deck by the Star of India, and discuss our shared vision of where we are headed. For starters, we are definitely heading to Dublin for GALA 2023 for St Patrick’s day. See you there!