Try the servants' entrance? Freelancers not welcome at the ProZ virtual conference for translation buyers!

How very curious. After a successful first foray into virtual conferencing last year, ProZ planned three for this year; one focused on freelancer interests, one for agencies and one for translation "consumers", which I presume means corporate buyers of translation services. I missed the freelancer's event when I got bogged down in work, but I did attend the agency event as part of the support team for LSP.net, the provider of the Online Translation Manager SaaS solution for scalable management of language service businesses. Freelancers were welcome at the agency conference, and I encountered a number of them in various virtual corners of the event.

So I was quite surprised - indeed shocked - to find that freelancers are excluded from the conference aimed at end customers. Does ProZ think that freelancers don't work directly with enterprises in need of translation? Some of us do so to quite a significant extent, and participation in that event by freelancers could benefit the main target audience in a number of ways. I find it quite interesting that vendors and advertisers to the translation industry (such as SDL) are welcome. For once, I'll spare the world my commentary and analysis on this point; I think the situation speaks loudly enough by itself with regard to a number of issues.

Those of you who do maintain some sort of relationship to the Translation Workhouse might want to let staff know how strongly you support the exclusion of those pesky freelancers.