meetings and conferences
Archived Posts from this Category
Twanguages: a Language Census of Twitter
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 30 Jul 2009 | Tagged as: language, meetings and conferences, multilingual, Unicode, web technology
What “twanguage” do you “tweet”? Twitter, the buzzing conversation of brief web and SMS messsages, exploded into wide use in 2009. But just how wide? To how many countries has it spread? And into which languages? I’m aiming to find out.
I’ve started a project named “Twanguages”, a language census of a sample of Twitter’s global traffic. I’m curious: which are the top languages? Are #hashtags localised? How does language correlate with location? And which Unicode character is the most rarely used?
I’ll be presenting our results at the 33rd Internationalization and Unicode Conference (IUC33), held in San Jose, California, on October 14-16, 2009. I have a place cleared for a Twanguages project page, and I’ll post interim results there as they become available (right now it’s only a placeholder). Stay tuned!
“International and multilingual Drupal and Joomla! sites” at LinuxFest Northwest
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 29 Apr 2009 | Tagged as: CMS, drupal, i18n, Joomla, meetings and conferences, multilingual, web technology
Last week I gave a presentation, International and multilingual Drupal and Joomla! sites. I’ve posted my slides and handouts at that link for anyone who wants to catch up on them.
The occasion was LinuxFest Northwest 2009, held at Bellingham Technical College in Bellingham, WA, USA. It was a delightful event. It’s thoroughly grassroots and volunteer, it has a friendly and accessible vibe, yet it attracts very knowledgeable people.
IIMA talk: “…successful multilingual web strategy”
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 31 Dec 2008 | Tagged as: meetings and conferences, multilingual, Vancouver
Right! I was supposed to announce this three weeks ago!
I’ve posted the slides from my Dec 10 presentation, “Expand your reach with a successful multilingual web strategy”. I gave this talk to the Vancouver chapter of the International Internet Marketing Association (IIMA)’s monthly meeting.
International and multilingual Drupal sites
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 22 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: CMS, drupal, i18n, meetings and conferences, Vancouver
I gave a presentation about “International and multilingual Drupal sites” to the friendly folks at the Vancouver Drupal Users Group on November 20, 2008. Follow the link above to see the slides.
This was a great opportunity for me to investigate Drupal 6’s internationalisation (i18n). As part of the research for my paper, I set up a basic Drupal 6 site with UI strings and content translated into Japanese and English languages. I found that Drupal 6 has very good support for multilingual site hosting. However, there were some tricky aspects to installing the right modules and then setting up the system configuration. I summarise them in the presentation, but it’s probably worth writing some better documentation.
Unicode Doggerel (“I am the very model of a modern text encoding scheme”)
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 10 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: culture, meetings and conferences, Unicode
This was fun! On Tuesday night (9. Sept 2008), there was a tribute to the 20th anniversary of Unicode at the 32nd Internationalization and Unicode Conference. I wrote this in a creative fury on Monday afternoon. The anniversary celebration was at an evening reception. It was very funny and enjoyable. Several other people contributed amusing tributes. My song appeared to be well-received. I hope you enjoy it.
(Sung to the tune of “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General”, by Gilbert and Sullivan.)
I am the very model of a modern text encoding scheme,
a million scalars, astral planes, and UTFs like six-&-teen,
and UAX and UTR, collation, bidi, properties,
I am the very model of a modern text encoding scheme.
Jim is a panelist at the Internet Marketing Conference, Vancouver, Sept 12
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 07 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: culture, i18n, language, meetings and conferences, Vancouver
I’m going to be a panelist at the Internet Marketing Conference Vancouver 2008, which runs from September 11-12, 2008. The panel is called “Writing for the Web“. It is full of experts on writing — and then there’s me. I’ll be approaching from the topic crosswise, talking about international and multilingual issues. In other words, how your writing is affected if it will be translated, or is part of a multinational project.
The panelists are an interesting bunch. I’m looking forward to meeting them. They are:
- Crawford Kilian, author of “Writing for the Web 3.0“. My spouse sweated bullets to write two books, and they shared content. Crof has written 30.
- Elizabeth Southall, Powerhouse Copy. Just reading her website makes my jaw drop. The lady knows her copy.
- Tom McNamara, McNamara Communications. Writing for the web since 1995, which is about as long as we’ve had the web.
- Monique Trottier, Boxcar Marketing, which is a Vancouver-based internet marketing company.
- Moderator: Michael Straker, VKI Studios, which is an Internet marketing and website usability firm.
- Jim DeLaHunt, Jim DeLaHunt & Associates. That would be me.
Jim presents to Joomla Day Vancouver this Saturday, June 14, 2008
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 11 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: CMS, i18n, Joomla, meetings and conferences, multilingual, Vancouver
There is a Joomla! Day in Vancouver this Saturday. I’ll be giving a brief presentation, on jdlh.com as an example of a multilingual Joomla! website, with human-friendly URLs.
“Web 2.0 goes to Babel: Multilingual websites and user-supplied content” at IUC32
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 31 May 2008 | Tagged as: CMS, i18n, Joomla, meetings and conferences, multilingual, Unicode
Oh right, I forgot to mention: I’ve been accepted to present to the 32nd Internationalization & Unicode Conference this September! I’m presenting on a topic which I’ve been working on lately: multilingual websites. The title is: Web 2.0 goes to Babel: Multilingual websites and user-supplied content.
Multilingual blogs and websites at Northern Voice 2008
Posted by Jim DeLaHunt on 28 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: meetings and conferences, multilingual, Vancouver
Last week was Northern Voice 2008 (Feb 22-23), a blogger’s conference here in Vancouver. It was held in UBC’s beautiful Forest Sciences Centre, in and around a pleasant sunny atrium lined with gorgeous wood panelling.
I convened a session on multilingual blogs and websites. I was interested in the issues that arise when we try to do all that cool blog or website activity in a second and third language. The first language is no problem; modern tools can handle almost any single language.
A great group of about 15 people joined in. We put our discussion notes on a page on the Northern Voice wiki (http://wiki.northernvoice.ca/Multilingual+blogs), so check that out to see what we discussed.
I walked in with a categorisation of the issues that arise as a website goes multilingual. This held up well in the discussion. Maybe you’ll find it helpful too.
- Examples: who’s doing it in multiple languages, and how well?
- Value: who needs multiple languages and what for?
- Structure: how to link content in one language to another?
- Content: is content in various languages the same or different? How/why different?
- Tools: how to make your blogging system or service or CMS handle the text and connect to your translators?
- Translation: how to get the content from one language to the other?
- Process: how to make all the parts move together and on time?
I’m really interested in multilingual websites as a way to structure thought about world-ready technology, and as a focus for my consulting practice. Expect to hear more about it.