Bay Area Industrial Linguists (BAIL) Organizational Meeting

Friends and colleagues,
[Apologies for duplication if you're seeing this note from me or  
another meeting organizer elsewhere.]

Background:  During summer 2007, the Linguistic Society of America  
(LSA) held its summer Institute at Stanford University.  I attended  
the 3-part evening series about jobs outside of the academy for  
linguists, and was delighted to see a good turnout both from a strong  
panel and from curious students, faculty or staff who wanted to  
inform themselves about alternatives to traditional academic  
careers.  That workshop has now spawned a new organization, BAIL, as  
described in the invitation below.

Terminology:  The term "industrial linguist" is a novel coinage to  
give a positive spin to "non-academic" jobs in a discipline that is  
starting to acknowledge its graduates are finding meaningful roles in  
business.  I've encouraged our small organizing team to reach out  
broadly to people in a variety of fields, such as
  - technical documentation writers and editors
  - usability professionals and other user experience roles,
  - globalization and localization experts, translators and  
interpreters, and
  - various other communication or technical professions where  
linguistics training might prove advantageous.

You and BAIL:  I'm sending this invitation on the BayCHI discussion  
list (and several other similar lists) because either (i) (some of)  
you have degrees, coursework, or strong interest in linguistics  
(whether from recent times or years ago), or (ii) because I expect  
you may know other people who will be interested in BAIL.

ACTIONS
1. Please share this invitation widely.  For example.
     Post the invitation to other online (corporate internal)  
discussion boards or professional associations
     Invite other colleagues whom I've overlooked or haven't met yet.

2. RSVP to Livia Polanyi as below.  Mark your calendar.

3. If you're not able to attend this first meeting, but you're  
interested in the general idea, let me or Livia know.  We may try to  
vary the location and time of meetings to fit the needs of Industrial  
Linguists in the greater Bay Area.  If you're not sure if you fit the  
definition of an industrial linguist, come and help us define it or  
choose a better term!

  -- Nancy

Nancy Frishberg
nancyf at fishbird dot com

INVITATION TO JOIN BAY AREA INDUSTRIAL LINGUISTS (BAIL)


Hi-

There are quite a few Industrial Linguists in the Bay Area. People  
like us who are trained theoretical linguists but who choose to work  
outside of the academy. Until now, we have not had an organization of  
our own, a place where our interests, strengths, experiences and  
concerns are what the organization is about. So, inspired by the non- 
academic employment workshop at the LSA Summer Institute,  some of us  
had the idea of setting up a group for Bay Area Industrial Linguists  
where we can come together, share experiences, network and provide  
support to young linguists who may still have close ties to Academia  
but who are interested in experiencing life "in the real world".

That said, you are very warmly invited to the organizing meeting for  
a new organization, Bay Area Industrial Linguists (BAIL) that will be  
held at Powerset Inc., 475 Brannan 3rd Floor, San Francisco A 94107  
from 6:30-8:30 on Wednesday November 14. The agenda for this first  
organizational meeting will be informal. Our goal is to come together  
and to see if we would like to go forward and try to build a  
community of Industrial Linguists. Powerset will host the meeting,  
provide refreshments, and offer BAILers a chance to see a demo of  
some of the features of Powerset's Natural Language Search  
technology. It should be a fun evening. Please plan to join us and  
please forward this invite to your Industrial Linguist friends who  
may not have received this invitation. We are looking forward to a  
big turnout.

RSVP appreciated but not required to Livia Polanyi, Principal  
Scientist, Powerset Inc. at [email protected]  (650-814-3020).

Looking forward to seeing you on the 14th.

Livia Polanyi, Ph.D. (Powerset)
Cati Brown, Ph. D.  (H5)
Nancy Frishberg Ph.D.  (Consultant)
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