Dear Members and Colleagues,

To meet the needs of our constituency as well as of a rapidly increasing market, we must revise the Association’s mandate, structure and membership representation. And we must do it quickly, as the window of opportunity is closing!

What’s wrong? Several members have articulated the most obvious problems and their recommended improvements. Here are some of their comments:

• “LISA has great potential but it lacks the vision and determination to meet the challenges posed by an industry where change is constant and technology is crucial!”
• “LISA is basically an excellent forum for meeting people and exchanging ideas. The trouble is that the most meaningful parts [presentations] are now almost exclusively oriented towards marketing and promotion activities.”
• “There is less and less real expert knowledge... and less and less interest from the field experts in participating. Hence less revenue for LISA!”
• “We need larger ranks in order to generate new ideas, to create heightened awareness of our industry and to take advantage of the benefits size offers in terms of effecting policy that serves the membership as a whole.”

What could be done to improve the situation? Member recommendations include:

• “Change the name to reflect the new positioning of LISA at the crossroads of enterprise globalization, the Internet and multilingual information management”
• “Require companies to stop the sales-pitching, or be penalized by not presenting for two years!”
• “Make sure that the right [technical] people and the right companies are actively represented in the SIGs… [by attracting] more domain area experts”
• “Change LISA’s marketing capability and its conference structure to accommodate more Forums.”
• “Change the membership fee structure to make it more affordable for more companies to join.”

What is the Administration doing?

• Restructuring LISA’s marketing efforts by outsourcing public relations, conference management and product marketing services
• Creating partnerships with international business and trade organizations
• Facilitating more technical SIGs and recruiting members to represent the business and technical issues and promote their efforts worldwide
• Establishing education and work programs with government organizations in the United States, Singapore, Japan, the European Community and other regions of the world.

In order to select the right people to take the association forward, I recommend the following modifications to the election procedure for the Executive Committee:

• Change the elected representation from a membership category (which currently recognizes only hardware/software and localization service providers) to voting categories that reflect the desired areas of improvement to move the Association forward—SIGs, membership, conference programs, finance & administration, strategic direction, market research, etc.
• Elect Executive Committee members on the basis of their commitment to provide the time necessary to accomplish specified results during their two-year term of office.

LISA has the opportunity to become a global trade organization. Our membership has the credibility to impact the legal, technical, standards and enterprise language policies associated with international business. We lack only one key component: greater member involvement.

LISA’s 10-year anniversary is being celebrated in Amsterdam, November 28-December 1. The annual meeting of the General Assembly is part of the program. An extraordinary General Assembly voting session will be held to ensure that we change the Association in every required aspect. My urgent request to you is: Be present or at least be prepared to express your views on how to improve LISA’s ability to lead the multilingual millennium. Even more important—vote to ensure that it happens!

Sincerely,

Mike Anobile
LISA Managing Director