IUC25 Call for Papers

Twenty-fifth Internationalization and Unicode Conference

Unicode in Government: Building a Multilingual Infrastructure

	Washington D.C., USA, March 31 - April 2, 2004 The Internationalization & Unicode Conference is the premier technical conference worldwide for both software and Web internationalization. The conference features tutorials, lectures, and panel discussions that provide coverage of standards, best practices, and recent advances in the globalization of software and the Internet.
Speaker Roadmap Conference Highlights Invitation to Submit Attendees Theme Sessions Publications Submission Form Speaker Registration Exhibitor Showcase Unicode Consortium	Conference Highlights As the theme suggests, this conference will focus on solutions that address the language and multilingual requirements of governments around the world. (Read the details.) Other conference highlights include: TILP on Localization The Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP) will chair a track devoted to localization standards, tools, methodologies and techniques. Automation Of Natural Language Processing Information retrieval, data mining, machine translation, speech processing and other software that analyze, understand, or generate natural human languages. Exhibitor's Showcase and Panel Sessions A forum on the latest advances in language tools and technologies.	IUC25 at a Glance Key dates Submissions due: Nov. 14, 2003 Notification date: Dec. 5, 2003 Completed papers due: Jan. 9, 2004 Venue Washington, D.C., USA Mar. 31-Apr. 2, 2004

New technologies, innovative Internet applications, and the evolving Unicode Standard bring new challenges along with their new capabilities. This technical conference will explore the opportunities created by the latest advances, how to leverage them, and the potential pitfalls. Their impact on business and the problem areas that need further research will also be identified. Best practices for designing applications that can accommodate any language will be demonstrated.

Attendees benefit from the wide range of basic to advanced topics and the opportunities for dialog and idea exchange with experts and peers.

We invite you to submit papers on the conference themes or topics that relate to Unicode or any aspect of software and Web Internationalization. You can view the programs of previous conferences.

A submission must contain an abstract and a speaker's biography. For more details and an online submission form, see the IUC25 Submission Instructions.

CONFERENCE ATTENDEES

Conference attendees are generally involved in either the development and deployment of Unicode software, or the globalization of software and the Internet. They include managers, software engineers, testers, systems analysts, program managers, font designers, graphic designers, content developers, web designers, web administrators, site coordinators, technical writers, and product marketing personnel.

THEME: Unicode in Government: Building a Multilingual Infrastructure

This conference will focus on solutions that address the language and multilingual requirements of governments and industries around the world.

Technologies built on the Unicode Character Standard make it feasible today to build a multilingual infrastructure that satisfies these requirements. This conference will examine the requirements and explore recent advances as well as traditional best-practices. The Washington DC venue was specifically chosen to allow discussion and peer networking around the needs of government including topics such as U.S. Homeland Security, and the European Union's challenges supporting all its official languages.

Example Building Multilingual Infrastructure topics include:

• Unicode 4.0
  Features of this recently released standard as well as previous versions, implementation guidelines, upgrading existing applications, and case studies
• Working With Multilingual Software
  How to input characters, which fonts to use, configuring software, integrating and deploying multilingual applications, achieving interoperability and backwards compatibility, administration and support guidelines
• Mastering Multilingual Web Applications
  Up-to-date information on Web standards and best practices for supporting languages on the web, creating web sites that support current and older browsers, implementing multilingual web services
• Acquiring Software
  Specifying language requirements, what to ask for, defining metrics, conducting evaluations, establishing Returns on Investments (ROI)
• Language Capabilities
  Current and planned releases from the major software companies, such as Microsoft (e.g. .NET), Sun (e.g. Java, J2EE), Sybase, Oracle, IBM and others
• Working With Governments
  Expediting acquisitions processes, making capabilities known, How-To guides, new models in licensing agreements. Also language issues facing Defense and Homeland Security, Education, Health Care, Law Enforcement, the Legal System, et al.
• Language and Cultural Requirements
  Specialized needs such as Hong Kong business names, dialectal characters in Arabic, Japanese JIS X 213 and Chinese GB 18030 standards, and support for the American Navaho language. General regional requirements such as right-to-left and vertical writing, culturally correct sorting, measurement systems, number and monetary formats, Hijri (Islamic) and other Calendars, et al.
• Language Software Standards
  including the Open Lexicon Interchange Format 2, Terminology Management Framework, Term-Based Exchange, the ISO Data Category Registry, the upcoming ISO Language Codes Part 3, and the International Standards for Language Engineering

Other Topics

Other topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The World Wide Web (WWW), XML, Web Services, protocols, Semantic Web
• Encoding standards, issues, practices: Practical and political hurdles implementing Unicode, new features of Unicode Version 4, new encoding standards
• Evaluations (case studies, usability studies)
• Natural language processing, Machine Translation
• Algorithms (e.g. normalization, collation, bidirectional), Search engines and strategies, Security (e.g. Avoiding spoofing of UTF-8 data), Optimizing performance
• Programming languages and libraries (Java, .NET, J2EE, Perl, et al), Migrating legacy applications
• Library and archival concerns
• Printing, imaging, typography, optical character recognition (OCR)
• Operating systems, Databases, Large scale networks, Cross platform development, Portable devices
• Government applications, Defense and Homeland Security applications, Education, Legal System, etc.
• Testing applications, Load testing, Unicode Conformance
• Business models for software development (e.g. Open source)
• Postal, address, currency and other international formats
• Localization process automation, Leveraging, translation memory, localization tools, Computer Assisted Translation (CAT)
• Localization engineering, testing, management, standards and file exchange formats (e.g. TMX, XLIFF)

We invite you to submit papers which define tomorrow's computing, demonstrate best practices in computing today, or articulate problems that must be solved before further advances can occur. Presentations should be geared towards a technical audience.

SESSIONS

• Keynote presentations
• Workshops/Tutorials
• Technical presentations
• Panel sessions

All sessions except the Workshops/Tutorials will be of 40 minute duration. In some cases, two consecutive 40 minute program slots may be devoted to a single session.

The Workshops/Tutorials will each last approximately three hours. They should be designed to stimulate discussion and participation, using slides and demonstrations.

PUBLICATIONS

SPEAKER REGISTRATION

Once your paper is accepted you need to register for the conference. Primary speakers get a discount of 50% off of the conference fee. This substantially reduced conference fee includes full participation at all conference and tutorial sessions, and related conference privileges such as food, beverage and the special event dinner.

For a submission with multiple speakers, please designate the person who is to qualify for the primary speaker discount. The speaker fee must be received by the Completed Papers Due Date.

EXHIBIT OPPORTUNITIES

The Conference SHOWCASE area is for corporations and individuals who wish to display and promote their products, technology and/or services. Every effort will be made to provide maximum exposure, advertising and traffic.

Exhibit space is limited. For further information or to reserve a place, please contact Global Meeting Services at the above location.

THE UNICODE CONSORTIUM

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, maintenance and promotion of The Unicode Standard, a worldwide character encoding. The Unicode Standard encodes the characters of the world's principal scripts and languages, and is code-for-code identical to the international standard ISO/IEC 10646. The Consortium also defines character properties and algorithms for use in implementations. The membership base of the Unicode Consortium includes major computer corporations, software producers, database vendors, research institutions, international agencies and various user groups.

For further information on the Unicode Standard, visit the Unicode Consortium Web site.

Unicode® and the Unicode logo are registered trademarks of Unicode, Inc. Used with permission.
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