*********************************** TSD 2000 - PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT *********************************** The Third International Workshop on TEXT, SPEECH and DIALOGUE (TSD 2000) Brno, Czech Republic, 13-16 September 2000 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. Being held in Czech Republic, the cost of attending is very reasonable. Proceedings of TSD form a book (currently published by Springer-Verlag in their Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series). TOPICS Topics of the TSD 2000 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; multi-lingual issues, especially multi-lingual dialogue systems; information retrieval and text/topic summarization; speech modeling; speech segmentation; speech recognition; text-to-speech synthesis; dialogue systems; development of dialogue strategies; prosody in dialogues; user modeling; knowledge representation in relation to dialogue systems; assistive technologies based on speech and dialogue; applied systems and software. Papers on processing of languages other than English are strongly encouraged. PROGRAM COMMITTEE Jelinek Frederick, USA (general chair) Hermansky Hynek, USA (executive chair) Baudoin Genevieve, France Cermak Frantisek, Czech Rep. Ferencz Attila, Romania Hajicova Eva, Czech Rep. Hanks Patrick, GB Kilgariff Adam, GB Kopecek Ivan, Czech Rep. Kucera Pavel, Czech Rep. Matousek Vaclav, Czech Rep. Moon Rosamund, GB Noeth Elmar, Germany Norling-Christensen Ole, Denmark Pala Karel, Czech Rep. Pavesic Nikola, Slovenia Petkevic Vladimir, Czech Rep. Psutka Josef, Czech Rep. Schukat-Talamazzini E.G., Germany Skrelin Pavel, Russia Vintsiuk Taras, Ukraine Wilks Yorick, GB ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Bartek Ludek Batusek Robert Gaura Pavel Horak Ales Komarkova Dana (secretary) Kopecek Ivan (co-chair) Matousek Vaclav Nygryn Pavel Pala Karel (co-chair) Sedlacek Radek Smrz Pavel Sojka Petr Staudek Jan Veber Marek Zackova Eva Zizka Jan FORMAT OF THE WORKSHOP TSD 2000 is an international workshop with a limited number of participants and priority given to the active participants. The workshop program will include oral presentations and a poster/demonstration sessions with time for discussions of the issues raised. Social events including a trip in the vicinity of Brno will allow for additional informal interactions. SUBMISSION OF PAPERS Authors should submit extended abstracts not exceeding 1000 words by March 10, 2000 to the e-mail address: tsd2000@fi.muni.cz Submission must also include the author(s) name, affiliation, address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address. Acceptance of the submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail. Papers have to follow the Springer-Verlag instructions for the authors for Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. The instructions can be found at the www address: http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html IMPORTANT DATES Preliminary registration and deadline for submission of extended abstracts: March 10, 2000 Notification of acceptance sent to the authors: April 30, 2000 Final papers (camera ready) and registration: May 30, 2000 Workshop date: September 13-16, 2000 The contributions to the workshop will be published in proceedings that will be made available to participants at the time of the workshop. The proceedings of the last TSD workshop were published by Springer-Verlag in the series Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and we anticipate the same format for TSD 2000. OFFICIAL LANGUAGE The official language is English. ADDRESS All correspondence regarding the workshop should be addressed to: Dana Komarkova TSD 2000 c/o Faculty of Informatics Masaryk University Botanická 68a CZ-602 00 Brno Czech Republic telephone: ++420 5 41 512 359 fax: ++420 5 41 212 568 e-mail: tsd2000@fi.muni.cz The official TSD 2000 homepage is: http://www.fi.muni.cz/tsd2000/ VENUE Brno, Czech Republic Brno is the capital of the region known as Moravia which is placed in the south-east part of the Czech Republic, and the second largest town in the Czech Republic (with population about half a million). It had been a king's town since 1347 and with its six Universities it forms a cultural centre of the region. Brno can be reached easily by direct trains from Prague (200 km) or Vienna (130 km). For those participants with some little extra time, some nearby places may also be of interest. The local ones include: Brno castle now called Spilberk, Veveri castle, Old and New City halls, the Augustine monastery with St. Thomas church and crypt of Moravian margraves, church of St. James, bishops church of St. Peter & Paul, Cartesian monastery in Kralovo Pole, famous villa Tugendhadt designed by Mies van der Rohe and 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 greatest Jewish cemeteries in Central Europe, Telc - a town on the list of UNESCO and many others are all within an easy reach.