Announcing Internationalization & Unicode Conference #45 Keynote Speaker Gretchen McCulloch

Taking Playfulness Seriously—When character sets are used in unexpected ways

HEEEEELLLLLLOOOO friends of Unicode! HaVE yoU HEard? 🚨🚨This year’s keynote speaker is Gretchen McCulloch, internet linguist and bestselling author of the 2019 book, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. ✍️ You ✍️ may ✍️ also ✍️ know ✍️ Gretchen ✍️ from ✍️ her ✍️ column ✍️ about ✍️ internet ✍️ language ✍️ in ✍️ WIRED. If you aren’t familiar withGretchen’s book it includes great insights of how language and technology evolves! Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear from her in person. (♥ω♥*)

Her talk, “Taking Playfulness Seriously—When character sets are used in unexpected ways,” explores those trailblazing language disrupters, who aren’t checking out the Oxford English dictionary or asking themselves, “What would my college English prof do about this comma?” You know who you are! 👀 She’ll discuss all the creative ways real-life netizens playfully create ASCII art out of text or combine emoji to convey new meanings, as well as the problems that arise when these kinds of creative uses clash with technical tools behind the scenes that aren’t expecting the unexpected—and what some solutions might look like.

In addition to Gretchen McCulloch, the conference offers Unicode tutorials, talks and panels on internationalization, web design, emoji, indigenous languages, historical scripts, and more. Of course, the conference also includes plenty of networking opportunities, as well as a special celebration of the Unicode Consortium’s 30th anniversary!

See What’s Happening at IUC 45

For thirty years the Internationalization & Unicode® Conference (IUC) has been the preeminent event highlighting the latest innovations and best practices of global and multilingual software providers. Join us in Santa Clara to promote your ideas and experiences working with natural languages, multicultural user interfaces, producing and supporting multinational and multilingual products, linguistic algorithms, applying internationalization across mobile and social media platforms, or advancements in relevant standards.

Join expert practitioners and industry leaders as they present detailed recommendations for businesses looking to expand to new international markets and those seeking to improve time to market and cost-efficiency of supporting existing markets. Recent conferences have provided specific advice on designing software for European countries, Latin America, China, India, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, and emerging markets.

Join us for the Internationalization & Unicode Conference 45, October 13-15, 2021, Santa Clara, California. To register and learn more, please visit the Internationalization & Unicode Conference website. Object Management Group®, (OMG®) organizes the Internationalization and Unicode Conferences around the world under an exclusive license granted by the Unicode Consortium.