The Blackbird Roost | The Post-LocWorld Issue

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Check out Issue #1, Issue #2, Issue #3 and Issue #4 (75% Open Rate!) of the 'Roost in case you've missed them.

Let’s get into it.

LocWorld55 was in Dublin this year.

For Blackbird, it was our busiest LocWorld yet. We doubled the size of our booth, which seemed optimistic when we booked it and entirely reasonable once the conference started. We had three or four demos and conversations running in parallel almost constantly throughout the event.

By the end of the week, everyone on our team looked pleasantly exhausted.

A few observations.

AI has entered its operational phase

Three years ago, conference conversations about AI were mostly about possibility.

What could we do? What would change? How far could this technology go?

Last year, the mood was different. Most organizations had moved beyond curiosity and into experimentation. Every team seemed to be piloting something. The challenge was figuring out what would survive contact with reality and create lasting value.

This year, something shifted again.

Many organizations have become remarkably mature in how they think about AI. The conversation is increasingly less about the technology itself and more about how it fits into business processes.

One of the smartest observations I heard came from Marcus Casal, CTO of Lionbridge:

That framing resonated with me immediately.

LLMs and agents are incredibly effective for exploration. They help us test assumptions, uncover edge cases, and discover what a process should look like before we fully understand it ourselves.

But eventually, an experiment becomes a business process.

At that point, nobody wants an AI model thoughtfully reconsidering the same decision for the ten-thousandth time. They want predictability. Governance. Auditability. Provenance. Oh, and cost control.

In other words, they want orchestration.

The pattern emerging across the industry seems increasingly clear: use agents to discover the process, then use BPMN-compliant orchestration to scale it.

Agents and orchestration are complementary stages of the same journey.

The conference program is becoming more diverse

One of the most encouraging developments was seeing new voices on stage.

There were more product managers, engineers, creative technologists, and operational leaders than I can remember seeing at previous LocWorlds. Many came from Blackbird-aligned organizations such as Notion, Indeed, Lionbridge, or Miro.

That feels healthy.

Localization increasingly sits at the intersection of technology, content, UX (accessibility!), data, and business operations. The people shaping the industry are no longer confined to traditional localization roles, and the conference program is beginning to reflect that reality.

With Nimdzi now at the helm of LocWorld, I expect we'll continue to see growth not only in attendance but also in perspective.

I'd still love to see more participation from enterprise operations and technology leaders, procurement teams, and content technology organizations -- like Contentful that is now part of Salesforce. Some of the most important decisions affecting localization today are being made well beyond localization departments.

Yesterday's fringe ideas are today's consensus

One of the more amusing experiences of attending industry conferences over many years is watching ideas move from the fringe to the mainstream.

Back in 2022 and 2023, terms like orchestration, control layer, language intelligence, or shift left often required elaboration.

Today, they're everywhere.

Am I complaining? No, I'm bragging! :)

It's a sign that the industry has evolved.

Many of the conversations that felt unconventional just a few years ago have become part of the common vocabulary. That's a credit to the people* and companies who pushed those ideas forward long before they became fashionable.

As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

It's also a pretty good indicator of product-market fit.

Part of me is still tempted to borrow Apple's cheeky 2004 billboard and update it for our industry: "Start your photocopiers."​
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* Let me do a few shoutouts here: Hilary Atkisson Normanha, Julia Díez López, Kirti Vashee, Philipp Wacker...
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The best conversations happened even before the conference started

My favorite event of the week wasn't actually part of the main conference.

It was the Multilingual AI Roundtable, organized by The Localization Institute (a partner of LocWorld).

I delivered a session on centralized versus distributed governance, but what made the event memorable was the format itself. Smaller group. More discussion. Fewer presentations. More opportunities to challenge ideas and explore them in real time.

Several sessions stood out. Marina Pantcheva's (RWS) presentation on Cultural Intelligence as the Next Frontier of Localization AI was one of the strongest talks I saw all week. It could easily have been the LocWorld keynote.

Olga Beregovaya (Smartling) shared a compelling perspective on where language technology innovation and R&D may be heading over the next several years. For me, this topic could be a whole day session.

There was also a fascinating "fireside chat" (no fire though) with two senior engineers from OpenAI that provided a rare opportunity to discuss the realities of AI development with the people building these systems. It was also fun to hear how they are (and often how they are not) eating their own dog food at OpenAI.

The experience reinforced something I've noticed repeatedly over the years: some of the most valuable conference moments happen in smaller rooms, with fewer slides and more conversation. I hope we see more formats like this in future editions of LocWorld.

The conversation has moved from AI models to AI operations

A few years ago, nearly every AI discussion started with the model.

Which model is best? What did you think of "Omni"? How good is the translation? Can AI reach human quality?

Those questions haven't fully disappeared. They just aren't the center of gravity anymore.

Many of the most interesting conversations in Dublin were about operationalizing AI.

How do we govern AI-powered processes? How do we keep humans in the loop where it matters? How do we monitor outcomes and continuously improve them? How do we integrate AI into existing business systems? How do we scale responsibly?

The focus is shifting from intelligence to implementation.

The model is increasingly becoming a component.

The workflow is becoming the product.

That feels like a significant milestone for the industry. Obviously, great news for Blackbird. And, perhaps, a sign that AI is finally growing up.

Thanks for being part of the Blackbird community. We'll be returning with the Blackbird Roost July edition next month.

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