IMUG Past Events Archive: 2025
2025 Events:
- May: The Trailblazers that Made Bangla Computing Viable
- Mar: Keyboard Design for Indigenous Languages
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2025 Events Archive
May 15, 2025, 6:30-8:30 PM
(Attendee chat/networking 6:30-7:00 PM)
The Trailblazers that Made Bangla Computing Viable
Hosted by Adobe in San Jose, CA
When Unicode and OpenType were introduced, they promised a more standardized future for multi-script digital communication. Yet through much of the 2000s, Bangla software remained fragmented, with major technology companies slow to support it and South Asian governments hesitant to adopt emerging standards.
This talk will explore the pivotal role of Bengali open source software hobbyists—individuals who took it upon themselves to build fonts, keyboards, and localized applications when no one else would. Embodying a hacker ethos, these hobbyists sidestepped bureaucratic barriers and corporate delays, working with whatever resources they had to make Bangla computing viable. This talk aims to present a view into the closely intertwined histories of open source software and software localization.
Anushah Hossain is a historian of the internet and Research Director of the Script Encoding Initiative (SEI) at the University of California, Berkeley. After years of studying the history of Indic script encodings and Unicode's inner workings, she decided to become directly involved in the process. In her role at SEI, she now oversees Unicode proposals on historic and modern minority scripts. She is also currently working on a pre-history of the Unicode Standard
Hosts:
Many thanks to Xiang Zhao and Adobe Globalization for hosting IMUG events!
March 20, 2025, 6:30-8:30 PM
(Attendee chat/networking 6:30-7:00 PM)
Zero To Digital: Unlocking Digital Inclusion
Hosted by Adobe in San Jose, CA
Indigenous languages are disappearing. We're fighting back. We'll show you how we're empowering communities worldwide and how we ensure community needs and data sovereignty are respected.
Digital inclusion starts with language. Translation Commons is making it happen. We are actively working to preserve Indigenous languages with our "Zero to Digital" framework.
Join us to see real projects in action, learn about our UNESCO partnership and how we provide language technology expertise to many of their programs.
Discover how you can make a difference through volunteering – whether you're a coder, a linguist, or just passionate about preserving culture. Come and join us and work on our projects ranging from research, authoring, programming, education, and more.
Together, let's digitize the world's languages.
Speakers:
- Patrick McLoughlin (in person): Introduction
- Smita Joshi (in person): Talent team
- Simone HK (video): L10n team
- Leonidas Pappas (video): Marketing team
- Lauren K (video): Website team
- Jeannette Stewart (in person): UNESCO Projects
Hosts:
Many thanks to Xiang Zhao and Adobe Globalization for hosting IMUG events!
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