We Met, Learned, and Talked in July 2021

We haven’t met in person for a very long time. You know why of course. It is Covid-19!

We have been thinking about different activities to do together, then we decided to organize an in-person event where we meet, learn and talk with each other.

The idea was to hold a mini-conference for a few hours and invite some guests, like friends.

We found such an event can achieve different goals:

knowledge sharing between the teams: every team will have a presenter who explains one core idea or a process they have in their daily work.
Improving the bonds between us: Working from home can be a challenge to have a strong team working together. Such in-person events can make us a stronger team.
Improving the presentation skills: many of our team members work behind the scenes and they never presented. We thought this could be a good opportunity for them to train themselves for a new skill.

After discussion, we agreed to make this during the weekend to be free of the stress of the daily tasks. Here are the main presentations and takeaways:

The Project Life Cycle: By Ahmed Aghory

Ahmed is in charge of running translation and localization projects inside TranslationPartner. He is the man you never see, but can smell his actions!

During the presentation, Ahmed explains the main phases of the translation or a localization project life cycle:

Planning: he explained how he defines the scope and the budget of the project. And how he chooses the tools and the resources for certain projects.
Organization: in this part, Ahmed explains how he coordinates the localization engineering part of the projects and how to coordinate the work with the vendors’ management department if needed.
Follow up: making sure the project runs smoothly requires follow-up with the project stakeholders to solve any issues they have and ensure the delivery on time.
Quality assurance: then Ahmed explained how he runs the QA phase before delivering the project to make sure it complies with the clients’ requirements.

How to Create a Devoted Client: By Sally Nassar

Sally is our senior account manager. She takes us with our clients on a daily basis to understand their needs and see how we can serve them better. No one else can do it better, because she is a super-active person!

She found the presentation of Andy Hanselman about how to create a devoted customer an interesting one and she uses it as a guideline for her daily work.

During the presentation, Sally explains that:

The statistics show 86% of your new customers were satisfied with their previous suppliers. Why did they leave them? Because they were “satisfied”, not “devoted”
Customers start working with you expecting to be satisfied only. They have low expectations but are looking for a great experience.
Once they start to expect more from you and you keep giving them the same great experience, you can turn them into devoted customers.

The Life of a Translator: By Waleed Marzouk

If you work with us in Arabic translation projects, you may have seen the work of Waleed, but never saw his name.

He wanted to explain how the daily life of a translator looks like and what he expects from his teammates.

During the presentation Waleed:

Stressed the importance of the relationship between the translator and the project manager. How the communication between both of them can make or break the project.
Explained how Computer-Assisted Translation tools play an important role in his productivity and quality.
Gave a few tips about the pros and cons of working at home. How this lifestyle saves him hours of the daily commute, but also how this affects his health and social interaction.

Team Watching and Learning

During every presentation, the other team member and guests asked questions and made suggestions.

What Motivates You: By Marwan Mohamed

Marwan is in charge of keeping the team happy and tries to solve all their problems, even before they happen. Also, he is the one who finds the best translators and vendors for the company.

He is very passionate about human resources and talent management. So, you will find him always suggesting new ways to motivate the team.

During the presentation, Marwan explained:

The different theories about what motivates people. He explained how we can be motivated by different things and how our needs differ over time.
Team motivation is important and how team leaders can make their subordinates happy and reach their performance peak.
There are different factors that make people unmotivated, such as when their leaders doubt their talents, give them too much blame, or treat them like machines.

How to manage a LinkedIn Page: Ola Essam

Ols is our talented marketing executive. She is in charge of running the company’s social media pages, creating infographics and managing the website content.

She is very passionate about presenting the message of the company to the world and making people know how we can help them achieve their goals.

During the presentation, Ola explained:

How the LinkedIn page content should be aligned with the marketing strategy of the company. Also, how the different types of content can be used to deliver the message of the company.
There are different tools she uses to run the social media pages, such as Canva for graphic design, SocialBee to schedule content and Invideo to create video clips.
Social Analysis is important. Ola explains how she analyzes followers engaging on the page and how this helps her create more targeted content.