This October I will be traveling to the Unicode 33 Conference in San Jose to present a tutorial and a paper. The organizers asked if I could feature it on my blog, so here is my honest “plug” for the conference.
I’ve already been once to Unicode 31, so I can be honestly say it really was the one of he best conference experiences of my career. They generally have an excellent range of programs for all levels and interests and this year is no exception.
If all you know is the term “Unicode” or “foreign language tech stuff”, there are beginner pre-conference tutorials which assume you know little to nothing including an introduction to writing systems in general as well as a “grand tour of Unicode.” If you know more, you can find tutorials and sessions aimed for die-hard programmers, font designers and project managers.
There will also be sessions on Unicode in Web 2.0 tools like Joomla and Twitter, several sessions focusing on Right-to-Left languages, math and East Asian languages (including Japanese cell phone emoji).
In addition to all the sessions, the major players will be there including presenters from the W3C, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, IBM and Yahoo as well as people from other companies and universities. This is also a gathering spot for members of the Unicode committee, so who knows you may end up talking to in the hall.
If you are seriously interested in Unicode, then this is a great opportunity to learn both the basics and the cutting edge materials. As I said in the title, I am really looking forward to this.
