IGNITE: The Interoperability Standard Verification Initiative For Localisation International Localisation Standards Convention Dublin, November

What’s This All About? b Using European Commission funding (OPM) to help us to do things we want to do anyway b Stimulating the take-up and use of existing and emerging localisation standards b Facilitating better, cheaper, faster localisation of digital content

eContent Programme Funding b The eContent Programme => Stimulate the development and use of of European digital content=> Stimulate the development and use of of European digital content b Funding up to 50% of total project cost b Project cost cap of €2.5 million b 3-8 partners b 30 months project duration

IGNITE: Objectives #1 b Provide a verification and validation platform to assess the interoperability of tools and services that support localisation standards b Why? => Interoperability verification is absolutely essential to ensure quality and general acceptance and implementation of standards=> Interoperability verification is absolutely essential to ensure quality and general acceptance and implementation of standards

IGNITE: Objectives #2 b Set up a framework of working models of L10N services b Why? => To verify overall web services approach, and as resources for dissemination and awareness activities=> To verify overall web services approach, and as resources for dissemination and awareness activities

IGNITE: Objectives #3 b To develop and implement a programme of dissemination and awareness activities including seminars, workshops, and conferences b Why? => To expand and encourage best practice by exploiting project knowledge, skills and resources=> To expand and encourage best practice by exploiting project knowledge, skills and resources

IGNITE: Benefits b Better standards b Wider use of standards b Better services b More business opportunities

IGNITE: Critical Success Factors b Support and participation of standards bodies b The involvement of a critical mass of localisation and digital content product and service providers

IGNITE: Project Positioning b Strengthening the linguistic infrastructure b Keywords => Less widely spoken and candidate country languages=> Less widely spoken and candidate country languages => Language coverage=> Language coverage => Pooling together language resources=> Pooling together language resources => Provide convenient access and a market place for access to language resources=> Provide convenient access and a market place for access to language resources

IGNITE Proposal: Milestones b Call for proposals likely December ‘03 b Information days Jan-Feb ‘04 b Deadline for proposal March-April ‘04

Arax contribution b Develop outline project proposal b Attend EC info day(s) to pitch and get feedback b Proposal writing and submission to the EC b Administrative management and dissemination tasks if project gets funded

Discussion b Does it make sense? b Do you support it? b Do you want participate in the project? b How would you like to contribute? b Next steps