The Blackbird Roost | June 2026 | Issue #4

👋 Hi, this is Brunó and Team Blackbird with a subscriber-only issue of the The Blackbird Roost Newsletter. Each issue brings a curated mix of what matters: practical insights from the field, fresh thinking on where content and language operations are headed, product updates you can actually use, and a bit of fun along the way. If you’ve been forwarded this email, you can subscribe here. ​
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But first, read Issue #1, Issue #2 and Issue #3 of the 'Roost in case you've missed them!

Let’s get into it.

Let's meet in Dublin for LocWorld!

In a few days, our team will be returning once again to LocWorld. It will be our 8th LocWorld since coming out of stealth at LocWorld in October 2022 in Silicon Valley (yes, Blackbird is "older" than Chat-GPT that came out of "stealth" three weeks later).
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We are looking forward to so many things.
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Brunó will kick off "Day 0" (June 9) with a workshop session at the Multilingual AI Roundtable on the pre-conference day, alongside Peng (Jane) Wang (Localization Institute), Olga Beregovaya (Smartling), Kathy Mok (OpenAI), Marina Pantcheva, PhD (RWS), and Alon Lavie (Carnegie Mellon University). The session will focus on AI and governance (#Blacklake).
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As exhibitors, we'll have an extra-wide space this year, giving us room to sit down with larger groups and even hold multiple conversations simultaneously. Check out our booth mockup.

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We'll have unique merch at the booth, including heavy weight t-shirts and our famed F*** Fuzzy Matches stickers.

On Wednesday, June 10, we'll present a session featuring Google, Microsoft, and our partner, Lionbridge, moderated by Marcus Casal, the CTO of Lionbridge. Our very own Dan Milczarski (VP of Solutions and the host of our ShiftLeft Podcast) will be our panelist.
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Come and meet us in Dublin! Sláinte!

But even before Dublin: Meet Mathijs in Rome this week!

Meet Mathijs Sonnemans, our VP of Product, at the TAUS Massively Multilingual AI Conference in Rome (3–5 June)!
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Mathijs will be a key panelist in the highly anticipated "From TMS to Orchestration" session, where he'll share insights on the future of language technology, process orchestration and AI governance.
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He'll also be competing in the EU Localization Championship, and he's definitely one to watch. As the reigning champion, Mathijs took home the title at the last TAUS Innovation Contest in Salt Lake City!
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If you're attending TAUS, be sure to stop by and say hello (or Begroeting). 👋

n8n Valuation and Investment from SAP (exploding head emoji here)

It has been an incredible month for orchestration.
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Berlin-based n8n has reached a staggering $5.2B valuation following a strategic investment from SAP. With more than $100M ARR, n8n has become one of the clearest signals yet that orchestration is becoming a foundational software category.
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What’s especially interesting is that orchestration appears to be a market where the tide lifts all boats. n8n, Make, Workato, Zapier, Power Automate, Camunda, and many others continue to thrive, each carving out a distinct position in the ecosystem.
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At Blackbird, our differentiation is equally clear.
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We are purpose-built for enterprise content operations and language intelligence:
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▪️ deeper interoperability,
▪️ richer enterprise integrations,
▪️ AI-native context orchestration,
▪️ human-in-the-loop checkpoints,
▪️ and workflows designed around multilingual content complexity.

With Blacklake, we’ve also introduced persistent state and memory into orchestration workflows, enabling systems to retain context and metadata across long-r̶u̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ flying processes, human-in-the-loop interactions, and AI-driven operations.

I believe this opens the door to an entirely new generation of orchestration.
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​Congratulations to the n8n team on an incredible milestone!

Bitbucket App Launch

The Atlassian ecosystem just got a little bigger at Blackbird.

We're excited to launch our native Bitbucket app, bringing repository events and development workflows directly into Blackbird's automation platform.

Bitbucket became our fourth Atlassian integration, joining Jira, Confluence, and Trello (fun fact: Atlassian is also a Blackbird customer!) Together, these integrations make it easier to connect software development, project management, documentation, and collaboration workflows across your organization.
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Whether you're automating developer handoffs, triggering localization workflows, synchronizing project updates, or connecting engineering teams with the rest of the business, Blackbird helps orchestrate the entire process without code.
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With GitHub, GitLab, and now Bitbucket, teams can build automation workflows around the tools they already use to manage their source code and development processes.
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See example w̶o̶r̶k̶f̶l̶o̶w̶s̶ Birds with Bitbucket on our YouTube channel.

Product Updates

The Blackbird product team is always cooking up some awesome stuff. Here’s a curated list of recent goodies. [See All Release Notes]

Custom Variables

The "create & update variable" operators have appeared in Blackbird!

Variables let your Bird store a value and reuse it later. They are useful when you need to:

1. Keep a value available for multiple later steps.
2. Rename an intermediate result so it is easier to recognize in dropdowns.
3. Build a string over multiple steps.
4. Collect values, like files, into an array during a loop.
5. Store a value that may change after decisions or intermediate actions.

Here are a few common use cases for variables:

1. Keep a boolean flag that is changed after a decision.
2. Build a final message step by step using text updates.
3. Collect files during a loop and send them together after the loop ends.

Variables are best thought of as reusable working memory for your Bird. If a value needs to change over time, it is probably a good candidate for a variable!

Tech docs: https://docs.blackbird.io/guides/variables/​

Big SEO use case unlocked!​
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With term base exchange (tbx) now programmatically available in Blacklake, you can pull new keywords, matching terms, and related terms from Ahrefs on a schedule or on event, and automatically push these SEO assets straight into a Blacklake term base.
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No manual steps. No copy-paste. The pipeline runs itself.
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This is also a major unlock for monolingual content operations: teams can now automatically leverage Ahrefs keyword data to enrich content published through Blacklake for SEO, without any additional workflow overhead.
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Keyword research to term base, fully automated. Who's interested?​
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Shift Left Podcast -- with Erik Vogt

Another great Shift Left episode is out! Dan had a great conversation with Erik Vogt on why orchestration beats optimization in modern localization and content operations. They explored how AI, modular workflows, and better signal detection are reshaping multilingual operations and why solutions architects increasingly need to think like systems designers focused on business outcomes, not just process efficiency. Check out the full video on our YouTube channel!

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Blackbirds Around the Globe 🌍

Bruno and Michael in London 🇬🇧

Blackbird cofounders Bruno Bitter and Michael Kriz were in London again in May -- our third visit this year. Highlights of the week included visits to customer offices, social events like LocDrinks, and of course the annual SlatorCon London flagship event at the famed Nobu Hotel on Portman Square.

Thanks for being part of the Blackbird community. Let’s keep flying faster together.

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