Yorick Wilks (yorick@dcs.shef.ac.uk)
Thu, 19 Sep 96 16:23:09 BST
CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST: PLEASE RECIRCULATE THIS WIDELY 1st INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON HUMAN-COMPUTER CONVERSATION Bellagio, Italy, 14-16 July, 1997 We are seeking expressions of interest before formally announcing a rather different kind of workshop: one that will survey and demonstrate techniques for practical, plausible, human computer conversation. The workshop would be in the spirit of the Loebner Competition meetings, but would not constitute any kind of "Turing" competition under controlled deception conditions, but would, we hope, give opportunity for extensive demonstrations of working conversational systems, preferably without domain restrictions. As well as practical demonstrations we would hope for papers and discussions on How-To-Do-It: including abstract discussions of the computer individual as well as reports of practical experiences of using the large resources and knowledge data bases now available through forms of information retrieval and natural language processing and their impact (together with fast access techniques) on high-quality conversation simulations. The meeting is not intended to be yet another get together on linguistic methods for dialogue modelling or human-computer interaction, but rather based on the assumption that, in a range of places, great strides are actually being made in real conversation simulations from practical techniques and points of view, and that all would benefit from face-to-face interaction on this, as well as exploring the industrial/commercial applications of these technologies in HCI/WWW environments in the very near future. The proposed site is the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, in Bellagio, Italy, on Lake Como, the legendary site of Pliny's villa where the two arms of the lake meet, and one of the most beautiful spots in the world, though easily reached from Milan. The date, 14-16 July 1997, immediately follows the EACL/ACL in Madrid. Working system demonstrations would be central, and there would also be a range of panels on aspects of the state of the art. Interest is solicited by email at the address below from anyone with new ideas, results or ongoing work to report on any aspect of human-computer conversation, or those with an interest in or commitment to the exploitation of this technology. The emphasis should be on the software techniques for communication in natural language and NOT on speech recognition or speech synthesis. Given sufficient interest a committee will be established and conditions for submission announced before the end of November 1996. Please put Serbelloni in the message line of your email. Updatings of developments for this workshop will be posted to: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/ilash/Meetings/Bellagio/ ********************************* Professor Yorick Wilks AI and NN Research Group, Department of Computer Science University of Sheffield Regent Court 211 Portobello St., Sheffield S1 4DP UK phone: (44) 114 282 5561 fax: (44) 114 278 0972 email: yorick@dcs.shef.ac.uk www: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/People/Y.Wilks *********************************
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