This year, the tekom 2016 annual telecommunication exhibition and conference (for some reason, its organizers prefer to write it this way – in lowercase) was held in Stuttgart.

In short, the conference was great. This year about 4,500 participants visited the event, which is 300 people more than last year. Presentations, round-table discussions, prize draws – the number of various activities overwhelmed. A wide range of topics was discussed: technical documentation, intelligent search, language technologies, CMS, terminology management, visualization, and, of course, localization and translation.

We participated in the international event as an exhibitor for the first time and, in our opinion, the debut had much success. During these three crazy days, we talked to a lot of people and made a great number of presentations.

Two huge conference halls were full of the most productive informal business air. Here such translation industry sharks as SDL, memoQ, XTRF, Lionbridge exchanged important news, valuable contacts, and peculiar promotional gifts.

Among the numerous stands, there was a place for tables, where you could relax with a cup of coffee, and Across company organized the active free time of participants and visitors: its table soccer area was never empty.

At times the advertising airship of the STAR company, the developer of Transit, one of the basic CAT tools, flew over us.

In the evenings during our off time were events for informal networking. Especially SDL Party and Across Party remained with us.

Parties are felt like entertainment, and it’s fair enough. But yet it is also the opportunity to establish new business ties and to strengthen the existing ones, and what is more, to get to know each other closer. Seeing your partners face to face and talking to them in an informal setting is completely different from official e-mail communication.

Any professional technical translation office should visit tekom by all means. Next year this conference will be held in Stuttgart again, and we are sure to be there.