Call for Participation: 31st Internationalization & Unicode Conference
San Jose, Calif., USA; October 15-17, 2007

Mountain View, CA, USA – March 20, 2007 – The Unicode® Consortium today announced a call for participation in The Thirty-first Internationalization & Unicode® Conference (IUC), taking place in San Jose, Calif., USA; October 15-17, 2007, sponsored by Gold Sponsor Adobe Systems (www.adobe.com). The call for participation runs until Monday, April 23. The annual conference is produced by The Object Management Group™ (OMG™). Details about the conference and the call for participation are available at http://www.unicodeconference.org/iuc31call. 

The Internationalization & Unicode Conference is the premier annual technical conference focusing on multilingual, global software and Web internationalization. Each IUC conference features a variety of tutorials and conference sessions that cover current topics related to Web and software internationalization, globalization, and Unicode.

IUC 31 will include sessions with a special focus on compliance, conformance testing and related topics. Organizations, including libraries and universities are specifically invited to submit case studies on their globalization efforts. The conference Program Committee is also seeking technical and business-focused presentations on case studies, experience reports, evaluations or research papers on topics relevant to (but not limited to):

• New and upcoming technologies
• Implementation of Unicode
• Unicode conformance and international standards compliance issues
• Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR)
• Internationalization or enabling of applications or Web sites
• Working with multilingual text and data
• Global development best practices
• Security and phishing
• Business cases and technical issues for globalized software
• Publishing and broadcasting for a global audience
• Encoding and Internationalization challenges for governments
• Unicode in the library and in university curricula

Tutorial Sessions are an important part of the conference. The Program Committee is seeking proposals on topics of interest to general software users, to project and program managers, and to technical attendees who need to build basic knowledge of Unicode and software internationalization. Tutorial topics can also include (but aren’t limited to):

• Program and project management of internationalization
• Best practices in localization process and technology
• Users: making the most of international features in common applications
• Unicode and internationalization in programming languages

Tutorial presenters receive complimentary registration, an honorarium and two nights lodging. Session presenters receive a fifty percent conference discount and two nights lodging. See the web site for full details and restrictions.

Proposals for panel sessions in any of the above areas are also welcomed. Those interested in holding Birds-of-a-Feather meetings should contact Kevin Loughry with their suggestions at loughry@omg.org, +1-781-444 0404. Interested individuals or organizations are invited to submit a brief (up to 600 word) abstract of their proposed conference presentation by Monday, April 23 using this web form: http://www.unicodeconference.org/abstracts. 

The Program Committee will select presentations for inclusion in the program and notify authors by Monday, May 7. Final presentation materials will be required from all selected presenters by Monday, October 1. The conference agenda will be available by Monday, May 14 and posted at http://www.unicodeconference.org.

 Sponsorships and exhibit space are available; for more information on sponsoring or exhibiting contact Jon Roussel at jroussel@omg.org, +1-781-444 0404 ext. 106. For all other questions email info@unicodeconference.org. 

Internationalization and Unicode experts, implementers, clients, teachers and vendors are invited to attend this unique conference. The interactive format makes the Internationalization & Unicode Conference a great place to meet and exchange ideas with leading experts, find out about the needs of potential clients, or get information about new and existing Unicode-enabled products.

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About The Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards.

The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations in the computer and information processing industry. Members are: Adobe Systems, Apple, Inc., Basis Technology, Denic e.G., Google, Inc., Government of India - Ministry of Information Technology, Government of Pakistan - National Language Authority, HP, IBM, Justsystem, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Oracle, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, The University of California at Berkeley, Yahoo! and about one hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium (http://www.unicode.org/). 

About the Event Producer
The Object Management Group™ (OMG™) is the new Event Producer for the Internationalization & Unicode Conferences. The OMG is an open membership, not-for-profit consortium that produces and maintains computer industry specifications for interoperable enterprise applications. Our specifications include MDA®, UML®, CORBA®, MOF™, XMI® and CWM™. OMG’s specifications are all available for download by everyone without charge.

For more information about OMG, visit us online at http://www.omg.org. 

Note to editors: Unicode Standard, Unicode and the Unicode Logo are trademarks of Unicode, Inc. Unicode Consortium is a registered trademark of Unicode, Inc. OMG and Object Management Group are trademarks of Object Management Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.