Presentations at Upcoming Conferences

I'm excited to announce that I (Marc Durdin) will be presenting at the Internationalization and Unicode Conference 36 in October, on the topic "From Typewriter to Touch: Multi Platform Keyboards — Challenges and Illustrations". I will be walking through a number of the complexities and challenges that may not be immediately obvious both when using and when designing keyboard layouts for all manner of modern platforms. Over the last 20 years, I've built up quite the laundry list of troubles that people encounter when trying to type in almost any language on computers, and during this presentation I hope to air some of the more fascinating issues that I've happened upon.

In August, I will be running a similar presentation at the My Language Conference 2012, in Brisbane Australia, with a focus on situations that government organisations, especially libraries and other cultural institutions, may be encountering.

Finally, back at the Unicode Conference, I will be also running a tutorial on the first day on designing a cross platform keyboard using Tavultesoft Keyman technology.  In this tutorial, using a specific example, I'll be taking attendees through core design principles around keyboard layouts that we've developed in the last 20 years, and from there into some of the complexities that arise when you try and provide a consistent, yet tailored approach for various platforms, including touch devices such as mobile phones, tablets, as well as desktop computers.  Designing input methods for touch is of course a fairly new area for me as well, and I'm looking forward to running this session and sharing the knowledge I have acquired, and probably learning a lot in the process!

I hope to see you at the Unicode Conference or the My Language Conference — or both!  Having attended both conferences on multiple occasions previously, I have found both are invaluable forums for learning more about working with languages on computers!