Stephanie Booth's online ramblings
[fr] Deux interviews que j'ai donnés récemment au sujet de la conférence que je donne à Copenhague sur le multilinguisme sur internet la semaine prochaine.
I was interviewed twice during the last week about the multilingual stuff I’m going to be talking about this week at reboot9:
Enjoy, and hope to see you at reboot!
The famous conference reboot will take place in Copenhagen on 31.05-01.06. I’ll be attending.
I’m also going to make a proposal for a talk (as the (un)conference format encourages this). I’m being a bit shy about putting it up on the reboot site before I’m happy with the title and description, so for the moment it’s a Google Doc tentatively titled While We Wait For The Babel Fish.
Those of you who know me won’t be very surprised to learn that it’s about multilingualism online. By “multilingualism” online, I’m not only talking about localisation or stupid default languages, but mainly about what happens when one wants to get off the various monolingual islands out there and use more than one language in one place, for example. How can we help multiple languages coexist in a given space or community, as they do at times in the offline world? Can the tools we have help make this easier?
Another thing that interests me is this “all or nothing” assumption about knowing languages (when you have to check boxes): I wouldn’t check a box saying I “know” Italian, but I can understand some amount of it when it’s written, if it’s necessary. What are we capable of doing with that kind of information? Read the draft if you want more.
I’m also proposing a session at Saturday’s BlogCamp in Zürich which will be around similar issues, but which will focus precisely on the topic of multilingual blogging.
Feedback on these ideas (and anything here) is most welcome. Is this interesting?
Update 19.03.2007: proposal is now on the reboot site! Don’t hesitate to leave comments there.
[fr] Projets de voyage: 28 mai - 5 juin, Copenhague pour la conférence reboot. Puis un ou deux mois à San Francisco (encore à déterminer) dès le 18 juin. Décision pas facile, parce que je dois me décider vite (sinon je perds l'option) et que ce sont des billets non remboursables et non modifiables.
On the way back home from judo by this bright sunny springy afternoon, I decided it was high time to hop in at the travel agent’s my brother had recommended and give a little bit of substance to my travel intentions.
Well, oh my! I wasn’t quite expecting as much substance. I’ve got a pre-reservation for San Francisco (June 18th to August 19th — two months!) and one for Copenhagen (May 28th to June 5th), for reboot (is reboot happening this year?) Both are quite cheap, but the downside is that I have to give confirmation very soon (3 days for SF, one for Copenhagen) and that there is no flexibility in the dates (I can’t decide to fly back a few days later), and if I cancel I still have to pay the full price of the ticket.
I’m thinking now that maybe two months in San Francisco is a bit of a plunge. There are two issues:
So, maybe one month would be more reasonable. Specially as I’ve been told summer could be quite cold (50F=10C?! can anybody confirm that?) in the city, whereas it’s beautiful in Lausanne during July and August. And maybe come back in autumn? Heck. I need to go to Montreal and India too.
Now, just in case I do decide to come over to SF for a month, starting June 18th… Are there any events taking place mid-July that I should know of? As I said, once I fix the return date, it’s set in stone — and I would hate to be biting my fingers off because I’m leaving just that one day early and I could have known…