TSD 2008 Last Call for Papers

[TSD 2008]

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		   TSD 2008 - LAST CALL FOR PAPERS
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Eleventh International Conference on TEXT, SPEECH and DIALOGUE (TSD 2008)
	      Brno, Czech Republic, 8-12 September 2008
		    http://www.tsdconference.org/

THE SUBMISSION DEADLINE:

    March 22 2008 ............ Submission of full papers

The deadline will not be extended - for individual requirements please
contact the organizers tsd2008 at tsdconference.org.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

    Jerry Hobbs, ISI USC, USA
    Elizabeth Shriberg, SRI, USA
    Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto, Canada


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: Brno, Czech Republic


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.

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
    parsing problems in spoken texts
    multi-lingual issues
    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 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
    Jan Hajic, Czech Republic
    Eva Hajicova, Czech Republic
    Patrick Hanks, Czech Republic
    Ludwig Hitzenberger, Germany
    Jaroslava Hlavacova, Czech Republic
    Ales Horak, Czech Republic
    Eduard Hovy, USA
    Ivan Kopecek, Czech Republic
    Steven Krauwer, The Netherlands
    Siegfried Kunzmann, Germany
    Natalija Loukachevitch, Russia
    Vaclav Matousek, Czech Republic
    Hermann Ney, Germany
    Elmar Noeth, Germany
    Karel Oliva, Czech Republic
    Karel Pala, Czech Republic
    Nikola Pavesic, Slovenia
    Vladimir Petkevic, Czech Republic
    Fabio Pianesi, Italy
    Josef Psutka, Czech Republic
    James Pustejovsky, USA
    Leon Rothkrantz, The Netherlands
    Ernst G. Schukat-Talamazzini, Germany
    Pavel Skrelin, Russia
    Pavel Smrz, Czech Republic
    Marko Tadic, Croatia
    Tamas Varadi, Hungary
    Zygmunt Vetulani, Poland
    Taras Vintsiuk, Ukraine
    Yorick Wilks, GB
    Victor Zakharov, Russia


FORMAT OF THE CONFERENCE

The conference program will include presentation of invited papers,
oral presentations, and poster/demonstration sessions. Papers will
be presented in plenary or topic oriented sessions.

Social events including a trip in the vicinity of Brno will allow
for additional informal interactions.


SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

Authors are invited to submit a full paper not exceeding 8 pages
formatted in the LNCS style (see below). Those accepted will be
presented either orally or as posters. The decision about the
presentation format will be based on the recommendation of the
reviewers. The authors are asked to submit their papers using the
on-line form accessible from the conference website.

Papers submitted to TSD 2008 must not be under review by any other
conference or publication during the TSD review cycle, and must not be
previously published or accepted for publication elsewhere.

As reviewing will be blind, the paper should not include the authors'
names and affiliations. Furthermore, self-references that reveal the
author's identity, e.g., "We previously showed (Smith, 1991) ...",
should be avoided. Instead, use citations such as "Smith previously
showed (Smith, 1991) ...".  Papers that do not conform to the
requirements above are subject to be rejected without review.

The authors are strongly encouraged to write their papers in TeX
or LaTeX formats. These formats are necessary for the final
versions of the papers that will be published in the Springer
Lecture Notes.  Authors using a WORD compatible software for the
final version must use the LNCS template for WORD and within the
submit process ask the Proceedings Editors to convert the paper
to LaTeX format.  For this service a service-and-license fee of
CZK 1500 will be levied automatically.

The paper format for review has to be either PDF or PostScript file
with all required fonts included. Upon notification of acceptance,
presenters will receive further information on submitting their
camera-ready and electronic sources (for detailed instructions on
the final paper format see
http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html#Proceedings.)

Authors are also invited to present actual projects, developed
software or interesting material relevant to the topics of the
conference.  The presenters of the demonstration should provide the
abstract not exceeding one page. The demonstration abstracts will not
appear in the conference proceedings.


IMPORTANT DATES

March 22 2008 ............ Submission of full papers
May 15 2008 .............. Notification of acceptance
May 31 2008 .............. Final papers (camera ready) and registration
July 23 2008 ............. Submission of demonstration abstracts
July 30 2008 ............. Notification of acceptance for
                           demonstrations sent to the authors
September 8-12 2008 ...... Conference date

Submission of abstract serves for better organization of the review
process only - for the actual review a full paper submission is
necessary.

The contributions to the conference will be published in proceedings
that will be made available to participants at the time of the
conference.


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:
    Early payment (by May 31):      CZK  8500
    Late payment (by August 15):    CZK 10000
    On-site payment:                CZK 12000

Student:
    Early payment (by May 24):      CZK  7000
    Late payment (by August 15):    CZK  8500
    On-site payment:                CZK 10000

The payment may be refunded up until August 15, at the cost
of CZK 1500. No refund is possible after this date.

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

At least one of the authors has to register and pay the registration
fee by June 16, 2008 for their paper to be included in the
conference proceedings.  Only one paper of up to 8 pages is included
in the regular registration fee. The additional paper and page
charge is CZK 1000 per page. An author with more than one paper pays
the additional paper(s) rates unless a co-author has also registered
and paid the full registration fee.

The organizing committee will provide grants for participants from
developing countries. The grants will have the form of a conference
fee discounts (50% or 100%). The conditions for a grant application
require the grant receiver to be an author of a paper accepted for
TSD. The grant limit per one accepted paper is 100% of one conference
fee. To apply for a grant, send an email to tsd2008 at tsdconference.org
with the Subject: 'Grant Application', in which you briefly describe
the reasons for your application. Each applicant must send a separate
e-mail.


ACCOMMODATION

The organizing committee will arrange discounts on accommodation in
the 3-star hotel at the conference venue. The current prices of the
accommodation will be available at the conference website.


ADDRESS

All correspondence regarding the conference should be
addressed to
    
    Dana Hlavackova, TSD 2008
    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: tsd2008 at tsdconference.org

The official TSD 2008 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 London, Moscow,
Barcelona and Prague 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.