Live from Budapest: MemoQ Fest 2009

Budapest is without a doubt the most beautiful city I have ever visited. It's a good thing I never visited the place in the 1980's - I might have defected, and life was strange enough with East/West politics back then. The two day Kilgray conference focusing on their rapidly developing translation solutions begins tomorrow; today there were various workshops offered which I did not attend for lack of time. Instead I chose to orient myself a bit in the city, catch up on translations and enjoy the evening social program with dinner and a short boat cruise.

I think most of the conference attendees are staying at the event venue (Hotel Benczúr), but I wanted to pinch a few pennies and stay closer to the city center, so I've chosen to stay at a little place that my partner researched for me: the Danube Guest House. What a great find - superb value, spotless and close to lots of great sights. The hosts, Zoltan and Bob are very kind and helpful, and I felt instantly at home here. My room is about the size of a monastic cell, but it is super-clean, has a comfortable bed, a working shelf/desk and WLAN. I'm a 5 minute walk from the synagogue, great book shops (including a second hand English bookstore I discovered, where I found a nice dictionary of Scots English) and a lot of other things that matter to me personally. The material pampering at the Danube Guest House is modest, but that's the way I like it most of the time. I feel very comfortable here, and I look forward to the opportunity to return for business or pleasure.

The dinner before the cruise was quite interesting and enjoyable. Waiting in a square for various conference participants to show up, I finally had the opportunity to meet one of my customers from Berlin, whom I recognized from the picture in his XING profile. It's funny that we're so close but had to come to Budapest to meet. He's the guy that suggested I have a look at MemoQ more than a year ago. The improvement I have seen in the product since then has been impressive, but I am still waiting for certain features that will allow me to work in certain ways that right now are possibly only with DVX external RTF table views, but there are strong hints that the wait will not be in vain. Given Kilgray's record so far, I'll be surprised if they don't deliver. One fellow in the dinner discussion has a few ideas that might offer a shortcut now, and I am very curious to see if he's right. If he is, there will be a very excited blog post to follow, and Kilgray will get an order for two MemoQ licenses.