Subject: ESCApad #12 Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 16:50:44 +0100 From: Isabel Trancoso To: esca_list@speech.inesc.pt ============================================================================ ESCApad number 12 March 31, 1999 ============================================================================ Dear ESCA members, Welcome to ESCApad #12. Now that we are more or less celebrating one year of ESCApads, we'd like very much to remember everyone that this is not a one-way means of communication between ESCA and its members. In order to make it a useful bidirectional bulletin, we need your input. So, send us your news. Here's a summary of our current issue: - Latest update on EUROSPEECH'99 - New ESCA SIG proposal: EduSIG - Short announcements: awards, workshops, IST info day in Budapest ESCA Greetings, Isabel Trancoso ============================================================================= Latest update on EUROSPEECH'99 The conference organizers have received 1075 abstracts from 50 countries. The conference will start on Sunday afternoon, September 5th, with the EU-sponsored session Satellite Event (European Union Activities in Human Language Technologies), and a welcome reception. The 751 accepted papers will be presented in 38 oral and 39 poster sessions. The conference will also include 5 keynote speakers, a pannel session on Open Software, an afternoon with a speech & language "Education Arena", student paper prizes, and time slots for the ESCA General Assembly, SIGs meetings, a COCOSDA meeting, an excursion and a Hungarian special event. Not to be missed. The list of accepted papers can be found at the conference website, together with the authors's kit and the advanced program. Important deadlines: Camera ready paper - May 1 Early registration - June 15 Please note that applications for grants are also due by May 1 and should be sent to the ESCA Secretariat. Students who have submitted an abstract and who have received notification of acceptance, are invited to compete for student prizes offered by ESCA, ELSNET and ELRA. The application should be sent to the Conference Administrative secretariat together with the full paper by May 1. More information on this and other issues on the conference website (http://tel.ttt.bme.hu/Eurospeech99/). ============================================================================= New ESCA SIG proposal >From Gerrit Bloothooft (ESCA SIG Coordinator) After ten years of successful actions in the area of education, mobility and training in speech communication sciences it seems timely to give these initiatives a more secure basis. Since last year, the European Speech Communication Association has the opportunity to have Special Interest Groups. The requirement is a group of at least 25 persons that share the interest in a topic. A steering committee of at least three members is responsible for the activities of the SIG. This committee should be member of ESCA (the interested group not necessarily). My proposal is to initiate an ESCA SIG on Education. The aim of the SIG is to stimulate activities at the international level regarding education and training in speech sciences. This includes promotion of mobility of staff, young researchers and students, actions to maintain and improve quality of education and curricula, stimulation of the dissemination of good practise, promotion of the development of materials, tools, and tutorials from which the whole community could benefit, advertisement of these activities at major conferences and the SIG web page, and many more. Although many activities have been initiated in Europe over the last years, it is the intention not to be restrictive in any geographic sense and indeed to strenghten contacts between the continents. Recently, the ESCA board has also opened the opportunity to have joint SIGs with other international organisations. This provides all opportunities to seek cooperation with groups in associations for phonetics, in speech and language therapy, in (computational) linguistics, which all share an interest in education. *********************** I would like to ask you - do you endorse the initiation of an ESCA SIG on Education? - are you ESCA member? - are your interested to take part in the steering committee of the SIG? - are you willing to give a helping hand in SIG activities (WEB development for instance) *********************** Could you please give your reaction before April 10. At the MATISSE workshop in London (April 16-17) we will hopefully celebrate the start of the EduSIG and we will discuss tasks and activities (formally on Sunday 18 at the plenary session of the Socrates TNP meeting). Kind regards, Gerrit Bloothooft (Email: Gerrit.Bloothooft@let.uu.nl) ============================================================================= SHORT ANNOUNCEMENTS Roger Moore and Herman Steeneken have been separately awarded the "1999 NATO Research & Technology Organisation Award for Scientific Achievement for repeated scientific contribution in scientific and technological cooperation". The awards will be given during the NATO RTB meeting in Warsaw in September. The fact that two such awards are given in one year is in itself unsual. Moreover, they have never before been given in the same technical field. So, congratulations are in order to our two colleagues. ------------- ESCA supported workshop: http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~steveng/dynamics/ "EPPUR SI MUOVE" -- Dynamics of the production and perception of speech Berkeley, USA, July 31, 1999 ------------- ETRW: IDS'99 40 papers will be presented at the IDS'99 workshop at Kloster Irsee. The papers selected will be put on the web-page http://www.cpk.auc.dk/ids99 shortly after Easter. Also the detailed schedule will be available. With 40 papers, there is the best chance of organising a highly interactive workshop, including the present plans to arrange for a full morning or full afternoon Tutorial session on: Dialogue Tools. The workshop also have keynote speeches from distinctive experts from the area of 'Interactive Dialogue in Multi-Modal Systems'. ------------- IST Information Day: On April 23, 1999 the Hungarian National Technology Development Agency (OMFB) and DGXIII of the European Commission will organize an Information Society Technology Information Day in Budapest. Speakers will include: - Mr. George Metakides, director of the IST programme, - Mr. Roberto Cencioni, head of unit, DG XIII, responsible for the Human Language Technologies action line. For those of you who are interested in finding Central European partners to consortia for the pending March 16 Call for Proposals, it can be a good opportunity. Project ideas are welcome and can be presented. It is important to note, that most probably the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland will be full partners in Framework V. You can find more information at (the IST page is planned for opening on March 31, 1999): http://www.sztaki.hu/conferences If you inform me about your arrival in advance at nemeth@ttt.bme.hu, I can help you to get around in Budapest (we also have some project ideas for speech generation/TTS applications). Ge'za Ne'meth