Latin America’s leading annual localisation event took place from 10 to 12 November 2005 in Florianópolis, Brazil. LISE 2005 was again dominated by a discussion of the efforts of the Brazilian government, industry associations and software publishing houses to find the right export strategies for Brazil’s exploding software development sector.

Brazil’s software industry will soon become one of the dominating forces on the world scene — due to a well-educated work-force, low costs, and an enormous internal market. 
The Brazilian government has recognised this enormous potential and is supporting a range of initiatives coordinated by GeNESS, the centre of excellence at the Federal University of Santa Catarina directed by the visionary academic José Eduardo de Lucca.

José Eduardo’s team already has plans in place to assist a select group of Brazilian software publishers to internationalise and localise their products. The lessons learnt during these pilot projects will be made available widely and demonstrate to other software publishers the benefits of developing internationalised software.

His team’s commitment to open source software is matched by that of the Brazilian government. Open source internationalisation and localisation efforts still lack the sophisticated tools and technologies that mainstream localisers have become so accustomed to. This is one of the reasons why GeNESS has agreed to establish the LRC – Brazil, which will work with other partner organisations across the world on the development of open source localisation tools, technologies and guidelines.