Contact:
Stephanie Covert
OMG
+1-843-737 0637
info@unicodeconference.org

Call for Participation: 33rd Internationalization & Unicode Conference
San Jose, Calif., USA; October 14-16, 2009

Mountain View, CA, USA – April 2, 2009 – The Unicode® Consortium today announced a call for participation in The Thirty-third Internationalization & Unicode® Conference (IUC 33), taking place in San Jose, Calif., USA; October 14-16, 2009. The call for participation runs until Friday, May 22. The annual conference is produced by OMG™. Details about the conference and the call for participation are available at http://www.unicodeconference.org/iuc33call. 

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 33 will include sessions with a special focus on emerging technologies, social networks, cloud computing, evolving standards, and best practices in internationalization for management, development and testing. Organizations are specifically invited to submit proposals on their real-world experiences with 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 globalization, internationalization and Unicode technologies
• Internationalized Domain Names
• Implementation of Unicode, including new scripts and characters in Unicode 5.1
• Current state of font development with regard to Unicode
• Unicode in “the cloud”
• Social networking and its impact on globalization and internationalization issues
• 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 data-exchange issues
• 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
• Internationalization of Web services and XML-based data formats
• Support of South Asian and African languages

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):

• Best practices in localization process and technology
• Users: making the most of international features in common applications
• Unicode and internationalization in programming languages
• Solutions for handling complex scripts
• Platform technologies for internationalization
• Program and project management of internationalization
• Strategies and best practices for managing multilingual sites & content

Tutorial presenters receive complimentary registration 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. Interested individuals or organizations are invited to submit a brief (up to 600 word) abstract of their proposed conference presentation by Friday, May 22 using this web form: http://www.unicodeconference.org/abstracts. 

The Program Committee will select presentations for inclusion in the program and notify authors by Tuesday, June 9. Final presentation materials will be required from all selected presenters by Monday August 28. The conference agenda will be available by Friday, June 12, and posted at http://www.unicodeconference.org. 

Sponsorships and exhibit space are available; for more information on sponsoring contact Ken Berk at ken.berk@omg.org, +1-781-444 0404. For exhibiting questions email event_marketing@omg.org.  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, DENIC eG, Google, Government of India, Government of Tamil Nadu, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, NetApp, Oracle, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Society for Natural Language Technology Research, Sybase, The University of California at Berkeley, Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members.

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

About the Event Producer
OMG™ is the Event Producer for the Internationalization & Unicode Conferences. 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.