FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS A Workshop on TEXT, SPEECH and DIALOG (TSD'98) Brno, Czech Republic, 23-26 September 1998 The workshop is organized by the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Brno, and the Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, under the auspices of the Dean of the Faculty of Informatics of Masaryk University. Please visit the workshop's homepage: http://www.fi.muni.cz/tsd98/ VENUE Brno, Czech Republic TOPICS TSD'98 will be concerned with topics in the field of natural language processing, in particular: - Corpora, texts and transcription - Speech analysis, recognition and synthesis - Their intertwining within NL dialog systems. Topics of the workshop will include (but are not limited to): - Text corpora and tagging - Transcription problems in spoken corpora - Sense disambiguation - Links between text and speech oriented systems - Parsing issues, especially parsing problems in spoken texts - Multilingual issues, especially multilingual dialog systems - Information retrieval and text/topic summarization - Speech modeling - Speech segmentation - Speech recognition - Text-to-speech synthesis - Dialog systems - Development of dialog strategies - Assistive technologies based on speech and dialog - Applied systems and software PROGRAM COMMITTEE Baudoin Genevieve (France) Ferencz Attila (Romania) Hanks Patrick (Great Britain, chair) Hermansky Hynek (USA) Jelinek Frederick (USA) Kopecek Ivan (Czech Republic) Krishnamurthy Ramesh (Great Britain) Matousek Vaclav (Czech Republic) Mueller Johannes (Germany) Noeth Elmar (Germany) Pala Karel (Czech Republic) Pavesic Nikola (Slovenia) Rubio Antonio (Spain) Schukat-Talamazzini E. Guenter (Germany) Skrelin Pavel (Russia) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Bartek Ludek Batusek Robert Komarkova Dana (secretary) e-mail: dkomar@fi.muni.cz Kopecek Ivan (chair) e-mail: kopecek@fi.muni.cz Matousek Vaclav Pala Karel Smrz Pavel Sojka Petr Staudek Jan Zackova Eva (principal contact) e-mail: glum@fi.muni.cz Zizka Jan SUBMISSION OF PAPERS Abstracts of no more than 500 words [plain ASCII text only, please] should be submitted to the following e-mail address on or before May 15, 1998: glum@fi.muni.cz Submissions should include, in addition to the abstract itself, the name of the author(s), affiliation, address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address. Electronic submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail, so please contact us if no acknowledgement is received. Acceptance of submissions will likewise be notified by e-mail. Accepted papers will be published in the Proceedings of TSD'98. Authors of abstracts that are accepted will be requested to send their papers in PostScript form (in LLNCS format) to the above by e-mail before August 17th. Format instructions (and LLNCS LaTeX format) will be sent to authors together with the notification of acceptance. Requests for participation will be processed on a "first come first served" basis. IMPORTANT DATES Friday, May 15, 1998 ..... Submissions of Abstracts due Tuesday, June 30, 1998 ..... Notification of acceptance sent to the authors Monday, August 17, 1998 ..... Final papers (camera ready) due Wednesday, September 23, 1998 ...... Workshop date FEES AND COSTS Registration fee: 80.- USD (includes proceedings, refreshments, social events and trip) Accommodation and food: Double room (shared with other participant): 130.- USD Single room: 190.- USD The full cost of the Workshop will therefore be either 210,- USD or 270,- USD, depending on whether accommodation is shared. Further details will be announced later. OFFICIAL LANGUAGE The official language of the event will be English, but papers on issues relating to text and speech processing in languages other than English are strongly encouraged. ADDRESS All correspondence regarding the workshop should be addressed to: Dana Komarkova Faculty of Informatics Masaryk University Botanicka 68a 60200 Brno Czech Republic tel.: +420 5 41512359 fax: +420 5 41212568 e-mail: dkomar@fi.muni.cz OUTLINE OF THE PROGRAMME All sessions of the workshop will be plenary (no parallel sessions). The format will consist of paper presentations (generally 20 minutes) followed by discussion (10 minutes). The workshop will also include social events, an excursion to the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University Brno, and a trip in the vicinity of Brno (the Moravian Karst, including the beautiful Macocha Chasm). LOCATION Hotel Myslivna, where the workshop will take place, is a comfortable hotel in beautiful woods on a hill near a natural reservation area very close to Brno. The surrounding is very quiet and suitable for walks and hiking (jogging) routes. Brno is the capital of Moravia, which is in the south-east part of the Czech Republic. It is the second-largest town in the Czech Republic (with a population of about half a million). It had been a royal city since 1347. There are six universities in Brno. Historical and artistic places of interest include: -- Brno castle (now called Spilberk) -- Veveri castle -- The Old and New City halls -- The Augustine monastery, with St Thomas' Church and crypt of Moravian margraves -- The Church of St James -- The "Bishops' Church" of St Peter & St Paul -- The famous villa Tugendhadt, designed by Mies van der Rohe -- Many other important examples of Czech architecture between the wars (1918-38). In the immediate surroundings of Brno are the Moravian Karst. with Macocha Chasm and Punkva caves; the site of the "Battle of the Three emperors" (Napoleon, Alexander of Russia, and Franz of Austria), commonly known as the Battle of Austerlitz; the chateau of Slavkov (Austerlitz); Pernstejn Castle; and many other attractions. HOW TO REACH BRNO Brno can be reached easily by direct trains from Prague, Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest, or by plane to Vienna and then by coach or train (130 km). Another possibility is to go by plane to Prague and then travel about 200 km by coach or train. Further travel details will be given in future announcements.