Many thanks to those who helped organize and run the NextGen conference, including, to name just a few, Catherine Marshall, a graduate student in Linguistics, Caitilin Walsh, a well-known figure in FIT member ATA (www.atanet.org) who provided the list of hundreds academic institutions in North America that were invited to send a representative to NextGen, and MIIS faculty member Adam Wooten, who was the liaison with FIT North America.

Also, thanks to the Slator online newsletter about the language industry that contributed space for an article about the NextGen conference that is has been “reprinted” on the FIT North America website (https://fit-northamerica-rc.org/human-translators-and-ai-translation-two-visions-of-the-future/) . We mention this article in particular because it explains the essence of the shared belief of NextGen participants, namely, that there are two visions of the future of translation and interpreting. In one vision, the goal is to automate everything possible (eliminating human jobs in the process), while in the other vision, the goal is to wisely choose between automation and augmentation, that is, augmenting the capabilities of humans.

Finally, a thank you to the leaders of the Localization World conference series, who sent out a notice (https://fit-northamerica-rc.org/locworld50/) of the NextGen conference to ten thousand language professionals, inviting them to come to Monterey for the NextGen conference a few days early. We then promised to help them find the way to the nearby city of San Jose, where the 50th LocWorld conference was held immediately following the upbeat and, by all accounts, successful NextGen conference.