The macro level of our business is pretty apparent - what company digests what other company (more or less smoothly, and with more or less hiccups), where investment is going, and what is happening on the large scale. No one in this industry discusses this with as much insight and flair as John Freivalds, whose "Money Talks" series has been carried by LISA for six years now under various names. John's success in seeing past the hype to what really matters is what has made this series so successful. In this issue John takes a closer look (premium content) at why Washington D.C. has grown while Silicon Valley has shrunk, what the major GILT companies are up to, and how companies have been courting the U.S. Government for their share of the "War on Terror" coffers.

While the macro level gets a lot of attention and is the one place where we can vicariously experience the thrill of millions of dollars slipping through our fingers, the micro level of day-to-day work and old-fashioned economic analysis is what makes the macro possible. After all, at the end of the day, someone has to sell something to make those millions of dollars, or the macro can suddenly vanish - let's not forget that the first Enron-style crash was in our industry (perhaps there is something to the feeling many of us have that what we do is what the rest of the world will be doing in a few years…). However much we might like the big deals, they depend on the little deals to happen.

In this light Jesús Maroto of Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper Interaction discusses his "Dream Scenario" for the ROI of multilingual websites and ways to ensure that globalized websites meet the needs of clients. In Maroto's view, localization of web sites should be viewed from a marketing, not just technical, standpoint. Treating website localization as a technical issue misses the real opportunity to demonstrate ROI. Marketing is always fundamentally about the micro side of the equation - getting someone somewhere to buy something. For an international market, localization is best understood as the cost of marketing to different countries. When considered in this regard localization is not just a cost, but an opportunity, and doing it right is the key.

And now for the "invisible." Perhaps I should have chosen a different name for this, but I think it works - in our third article Bill Sullivan of IBM explains why he has no clue what IBM spends on GILT, which sounds a lot like GILT being invisible… Although it seems a frightening thought that a major company like IBM can't tell you how much it spends on GILT, Sullivan argues that his inability to tell how much IBM spends on globalization is a far cry from the ignorance of days gone past and may represent the best hope this industry has in the long run.

So all of the articles in this issue have to do with money, but they also have to do with education - knowing what's going on in the industry and changing the way we think and talk about it. If we want to make money we have to know what we're doing, and it is our hope that these articles will contribute to a better understanding of the industry.

Also, if you haven't done so yet, please take a few minutes to complete our question of the month on how your company manages QA. It takes just a moment, and you can compare your answer with that of your colleagues to see where you stand with respect to them.