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		  TSD 2006 - CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
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Ninth International Conference on TEXT, SPEECH and DIALOGUE (TSD 2006)
	      Brno, Czech Republic, 11-15 September 2006
		    http://www.tsdconference.org/

The conference is organized by the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk
University, Brno, and the Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of
West Bohemia, Pilsen.  The conference is supported by International
Speech Communication Association.

VENUE: Hotel Continental, Brno, Czech Republic


IMPORTANT DATES

September 11-15 2006 ..... Conference date


TSD SERIES

TSD series evolved as a prime forum for interaction between
researchers in both spoken and written language processing from the
former East Block countries and their Western colleagues. Proceedings
of TSD form a book published by Springer-Verlag in their Lecture Notes
in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series (as Volume 4188 this year).


TOPICS

Topics of the conference 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
    multi-lingual issues, especially multi-lingual dialogue systems
    information retrieval and information extraction
    text/topic summarization
    machine translation
    semantic networks and ontologies
    semantic web
    speech modeling
    speech segmentation
    speech recognition
    search in speech for IR and IE
    text-to-speech synthesis
    dialogue systems
    development of dialogue strategies
    prosody in dialogues
    emotions and personality modeling
    user modeling
    knowledge representation in relation to dialogue systems
    assistive technologies based on speech and dialogue
    applied systems and software
    facial animation
    visual speech synthesis

Papers on processing of languages other than English are strongly
encouraged.


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

    Frederick Jelinek, USA (general chair)
    Hynek Hermansky, Switzerland (executive chair)
    Eneko Agirre, Spain
    Genevieve Baudoin, France
    Jan Cernocky, Czech Republic
    Attila Ferencz, Romania
    Alexander Gelbukh, Mexico
    Louise Guthrie, GB
    Eva Hajicova, Czech Republic
    Jaroslava Hlavacova, Czech Republic
    Eduard Hovy, USA
    Ivan Kopecek, Czech Republic
    Steven Krauwer, The Netherlands
    Siegfried Kunzmann, Germany
    Vaclav Matousek, Czech Republic
    Hermann Ney, Germany
    Elmar Noeth, Germany
    Karel Oliva, Czech Republic
    Karel Pala, Czech Republic
    Nikola Pavesic, Slovenia
    Vladimr Petkevic, Czech Republic
    Josef Psutka, Czech Republic
    James Pustejovsky, USA
    Leon Rothkrantz, The Netherlands
    E.G. Schukat-Talamazzini, Germany
    Pavel Skrelin, Russia
    Pavel Smrz, Czech Republic
    Taras Vintsiuk, Ukraine
    Yorick Wilks, GB
    Victor Zakharov, Russia

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

    The detailed conference program with links to presentation
    abstracts is now available on the conference web page
    http://www.tsdconference.org/tsd2006/tsd_prog.html

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

    Eduard Hovy, USA
    Learning by Reading: An Experiment in Text Analysis
    
    Louise Guthrie, GB
    Discovering Anomalous Material

    James Pustejovsky, USA
    Unifying Semantic Annotations for Linguistic Description

    Eva Hudlicka, USA
    Depth of Feelings: Alternatives for Modeling Affect in User Models and
    Cognitive Architectures


PANEL DISCUSSION

    Panelists: Elmar Noeth, Nadia Mana, Geza Nemeth, Eva Hudlicka 
    Emotions in Text, Speech and Dialogue


FORMAT OF THE CONFERENCE

The conference program will include oral presentations and
poster/demonstration sessions with sufficient time for discussions of
the issues raised. Papers will be presented in plenary or topic
oriented sessions.

The conference will welcome four keynote speakers - Eduard Hovy,
Louise Guthrie, James Pustejovsky and Eva Hudlicka, and it will offer
one special panel devoted to Emotions in Text, Speech and Dialogue.

Social events including a Czech Welcome Dinner, a trip to Austerlitz
Castle (with a "virtual battle" show) finished with Moravian dancing
and Moravian conference dinner will allow for additional informal
interactions.


OFFICIAL LANGUAGE

The official language of the conference is English.


CONFERENCE FEES

The conference fee depends on the date of payment and on your status.
It includes one copy of the proceedings, refreshments, local
transport, social events and organizing costs. The fee does not
include accommodation.

Full participant:
    On-site payment:                CZK 12000

Student:
    On-site payment:                CZK  8000

All costs are in Czech Crowns (Czech Koruna, CZK), see e.g.
http://www.xe.com/ucc/ for the current exchange rate.


ACCOMMODATION

The organizing committee has arranged discounts on accommodation in a
3-star hotel and student dormitories at reasonable prices. The current
list of available accommodation and prices is accessible at the
registration page of the conference website.


ADDRESS

All correspondence regarding the conference should be
addressed to
    
    Dana Hlavackova, TSD 2006
    Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University
    Botanicka 68a, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic
    phone: +420-5-49 49 33 29
    fax: +420-5-49 49 18 20
    email: tsd2006@tsdconference.org

The official TSD 2006 homepage is: http://www.tsdconference.org/


LOCATION

Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic with a
population of almost 400.000. The city is the country's judiciary and
trade-fair center. Brno is the capital of Moravia, which is in the
south-east part of the Czech Republic. Brno had been a Royal City
since 1347 and with its six universities it forms also a cultural
center of the region.

Brno can be reached easily by direct flights from Prague, London and
Munich and by trains or buses from Prague (200 km) or Vienna (130 km).

For the participants with some extra time, some nearby places may also
be of interest.  Local ones 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, Church of St.
James, Cathedral of St. Peter & Paul, Cartesian Monastery in Kralovo
Pole, the famous Villa Tugendhat designed by Mies van der Rohe along
with other important buildings of between-war Czech architecture.

For those willing to venture out of Brno, Moravian Karst with Macocha
Chasm and Punkva caves, battlefield of Battle of three emperors
(Napoleon, Russian Alexander and Austrian Franz - Battle by
Austerlitz), Chateau of Slavkov (Austerlitz), Pernstejn Castle,
Buchlov Castle, Lednice Chateau, Buchlovice Chateau, Letovice Chateau,
Mikulov with one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Central Europe,
Telc - a town on the UNESCO heritage list, and many others are all
within easy reach.