“Max is hands down the best Globalization trainer we have ever worked with. I hired him to work on a huge Microsoft project for the entire World Wide Partner group. The goal was to create a Globalization Framework that allows us to increase content translation quality and adoption rate while decreasing localization time and cost due to poorly planned/created content. Max did an incredible job in thoroughly researching the best message for our teams and building a strong training package that would be delivered to three separate audiences. Our audiences were Content Owners, Content Managers and the Creative Agencies that create the marketing content for our partners. Each training session targeted a specific audience and provided a global message to ensure each group shared the same goal and understood how to work together. Our survey’s reflected extremely high satisfaction and understanding from all attendees. I will absolutely use Max’s services in the future and highly suggest content creating companies to tap into his wealth of knowledge and allow Max to create a special training for your audience. If you want to reduce cost and increase quality, contact Max, he’ll show you how.” November 6, 2008
Top qualities: Great Results, Expert, High Integrity Charl Pearce, Product Manager in WorldWide Partner Group at Microsoft
“Maxwell Hoffmann is a top-notch localization and translation expert who gets “the big picture” and can relate his niche knowledge to the discipline of content management. He is detail-oriented, extremely bright, and an asset on any team struggling to improve their content creation, management and delivery processes. There’s so much that Maxwell is good at, that’s it’s hard to pinpoint his strongest business strengths, but among them are: deep knowledge of XML structured authoring, legacy content conversion, dynamic personalized content, content management, translation and localization issues, content quality, technical documentation, content reuse, and more. Maxwell is also an excellent author (who writes for a variety of publications, including The Content Wrangler) and is a popular presenter/workshop instructor at industry conferences and training events. When Maxwell is on your team, you can rest assured you are getting your money’s worth — and then some.” October 12, 2008Top qualities: Great Results, Personable, Expert Scott Abel, THE CONTENT WRANGLER
“Max was a great asset in a pilot project for one of our largest clients. The goal of the project was to develop a framework and process for the localization of international marketing content. The legacy process that needed to be replaced had a number of shortcomings, such as: (1) the language and terminology used in creating source content was difficult for international English speakers to understand, resulting in inaccurate adaptations of certain claims (2) the core meaning of the source english content was inappropriate for the target market, resulting in low satisfaction with translated materials (3) the content packages provided by the creators of the source content were inconsistently organized, and often missing key components such as graphics source, leading to extra delays and costs during localization tracking down or recreating assets Max was invaluable in addressing these issues.
He did extensive research on legacy content to identify the key issues that led to wasted money and time during localization. He lead the development of a training course for content creators on producing globally appropriate content, and delivered it to the client side managers responsible for content creation, and their vendors. The training was very well received. Attendees commented that the examples were appropriate and compelling, and that they felt that they now understood the issues and would be able to produce appropriate content going forward. An observer confided in me that this was one of the few training sessions they had ever attended where the participants weren’t paying more attention to their Blackberries than the instructor, which I attribute to the quality of Max’s materials and presentation.” October 8, 2008
Douglas Knoll, Solutions, Welocalize worked directly with Maxwell at Welocalize
“Maxwell is not only “THE” publishing and FrameMaker expert, but he has also delivered a lot of highly effective marketing support as a valued member of our sales team while here at ENLASO. He generated a considerable amount of fresh content through case studies that enhanced our Web site SEO results, and helped generate many more hits and leads than we had captured before. Maxwell also worked on an exhaustive White Paper (McDonald’s) that took over 10 months of research and collaborative editing with the customer due to a variety of complications. The McDonald’s White Paper was widely posted worldwide, and was even voluntarily translated into German and Italian by other parties! Maxwell also created and hosted several advanced topic webinars that drew large attendance. These webinars enhanced our value to existing customers, and helped bring in new sales leads and lead to ENLASO’s tradition of providing top notch expertise, which continues to this day. Beyond his many other skills, Maxwell is also an excellent content creator, editor and “ghost writer” — he has a gift for writing in the “tone” of a team member who may be unavailable for first draft deadlines. I highly recommend him for anything involving analysis or creation of content, especially in the ever-changing arenas of localization, globalization, XML and publishing.” October 8, 2008Chris Raulf, Marketing Manager, ENLASO Corp. worked directly with Maxwell at ENLASO
“I had the pleasure of working with Max through our translation vendor, RWS Group. Max’ FrameMaker knowledge is contagious! When I first started working for Beckman, I didn’t know FrameMaker. Max taught me the basics and challenged me to expand my desktop publishing knowledge and learn FrameMaker through tutorials, online manuals and online help. He was always available when problems arose that I couldn’t figure out on my own. He made me aspire to become as skilled in FrameMaker as he was. Not an easy task. Max took our Technical Publications department into the future by using FrameMaker for single source publishing. We published round-trip from FrameMaker to xml to html and back to FrameMaker for pdf in eight languages! We were one of the first companies to do this at that time and we couldn’t have done it without his technical expertise. As our department grew, he led training classes to the new employees who had never used anything other than a word processor. He is a very patient trainer and makes learning fun. His material was targeted for specific use which aided in the learning process. I highly recommend Max!” February 26, 2008Helen Perez, Production Administrator, Beckman Coulter, Inc. worked with Maxwell at RWS GROUP
