The widespread availability of good wifi connections has been a game-changer for Lexicom. In the early days of the Workshop, we always held the event in university premises with proper computer labs, because we needed rows of web-connected PCs for participants to work on and complete their practical tasks. We’ve been lucky enough to be hosted by some excellent university departments. But nowadays, with fast wifi connections almost everywhere, we have a wider choice of venues. So it was that we met for the 13th annual Lexicom-Europe Workshop in Blåsingsborgs, a delightful family-run hotel with its own conference facilities in southeast Sweden – just 2 km from the sea, and not far from the town of Ystad (where the fictional detective Kurt Wallander is based).
Twenty-four participants, many of them experienced lexicographers, came from countries including Georgia, Germany, Russia, Bulgaria, Greece, the US and UK – but with an especially strong contingent from the Scandinavian countries. This year we were joined by guest lecturer Jens Erlandsen of Erlandsen Media Publishing AB. Jens is one of the leading thinkers in the area of electronic reference publishing, and his sessions on “Preparing for the electronic age” were a perfect complement to the topics we traditionally cover in the workshop.
