From Seattle (USA) to Coimbatore (India) in June? You betcha!

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2010/04/23 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2010/04/23/9993725.aspx

Regular readers¹ may remember my On not being in Germany in October blog from last September, when I explained that I could not attend the Tamil Internet conference being held in Köln, Germany.

I have enjoyed the previous Tamil Internet conferences I have attended, the people I met, the feedback I got from people who attended my talks, and the connections I have made (many of which are still around to this day²).

But I have continued during all this time to enjoy the language and the script (and the drama!) of Tamil, as well as the many technical issues that arise around it.

Thus, while it is still early yet³, I am pleased to say on this blog you are reading right now that I plan to speak at the Tamil Internet 2010 Conference in கோயம்புத்தூர் (Coimbatore), also sometimes known as கோவை (Kovai), from June 23rd to June 27th of this year....

When they asked what I would be willing to talk about I suggested four different topics, and they agreed with all of them (plus they suggested one or two more). They covered a wide range from Unicode to TACE16 to Indic text in Microsoft products to linguistic issues to text input to history. And we'll negoitate some of that part a bit (there are aomd poresentations I want to attend, making the continuous Michael show impractical!), and I'll take some extra days in India, while I'm going that far anyway, oif course.

Now in rememberance of prior trips -- to Malaysia, India, Thailand, Singapore, and other countries nearby -- at various times during the year, I am preparing myself for the greater heat at time of year I will be there, than the last time I was in India.

And having been to Chennai and Bangalore with a scooter (something I blogged about previously) -- thinking about both the benefits and drawbacks of the scooter -- I believe am prepared mentally to spend time in Southern India with an iBot -- in fact I am looking forward to spending time there again, this time with a device that lets me get around much more normally than the scooter did, with all those tall curbs without sidewalk cutouts! :-)

Now in blogging this, I know I risk there being some unforeseen circumstance that would keep me from going, but with the visa in progress (no red flags raised yet) and the plane tickets on the way (dittro) I am quite hopeful that this will be happening. And assuming it will, and once the final list of presentations is available I'll put that list up here with information on each.

Along with the blogs while I am there, about what's going on. A future iBot in India series -- have iBots been to India before?

If you are in that part of the world then be sure to pop by to the conference in Kovai, introduce yourself, and mention that you are a reader here!

Other places that might be visited while I am there are still being considered....

1 - Also irregular readers with somewhat consistent reading habits
2 - This is the principal reason I ultimately bowed out of the idea of doing confidential work for the US government since the SF-86 is much more complicated to fill out for Top Secret clearance if you have as much foreign travel as I have had and as much regular contact with foreign nationals, not to mention how much travel I have simply forgotten....
3 - and there is many a slip twixt a cup and a lip, aa they say.

"Also irregular readers with somewhat consistent reading habits"

Thanks for remembering me :)

Will you be coming to Bangalore/Mysore? Mysore is about 2.5 hrs drive from Bangalore. Very beautiful city and many places around for site-seeing. I am in Mysore from last September. We have a community group at Mysore called Mysore Geeks (www.mysoregeeks.com). I am inviting you to give a session there similar to the one you did at Bangalore DotNet User Group. I will be your chauffer at Mysore (very highly over qualified one for that job :))

Regards,

Pavanaja

I am not sure what I will be doing yet, it is still in the planning phases as I work out who I need/want to see in the limited time I have. But I will keep you posted. :-)

But you should feel free to come to Kovai for the conference. I am going to endeavor to be awesome! :-)

Great that localization biggies like you attend Semmozhi Manadu (Tamil Internet Conference is a part of it). I assume that this mega event is the biggest one ever happened in any language across the world. Love to see you there!

Please consider a donation to keep this archive running, maintained and free of advertising.
Donate €20 or more to receive an offline copy of the whole archive including all images.