FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS Apologies if you receive this from more than one source THIRD WORKSHOP ON HUMAN-COMPUTER CONVERSATION Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy 3-5 July, 2000 The Workshops on Human-Computer Conversation in Bellagio, Italy, took place in 1997 and 1998, as small groups of experts from industry and academia met to discuss this pressing question for the future of Language Engineering, not as an academic question only, but chiefly to bring forward for discussion computer demonstrations and activities within company laboratories that were not being published or discussed. The Workshops were highly successful in these aims and we now wish to widen participation and add distinguished speakers, as well as introducing more theoretical topics, though without losing the practical emphasis. The theme of interactivity is now a key one in Human Language Technology under the European Commission's Fifth Framework Programme. The Bellagio site remains one of the finest in the world, and it promoted excellent and intimate discussions in 1997 and 1998. All details, previous program, program committee, accomodation and travel are on the web site: www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/units/ilash/Meetings/bellagio2000/ Invited speakers include (one has not yet accepted): Dr B Alabisio, Microsoft, US Dr J Hutchens, UWA, Australia Professor G Leech, University of Lancaster, UK Dr M Moens, University of Edinburgh, UK Dr U Reithinger, DFKI-Saarbruecken, DE Dr T Strzalkowski, General Electric, US Professor D Traum, University of Maryland, US Timetable: Contributions are invited on any aspect of human-computer conversation. Two page abstracts should be sent by paper or email to Gillian Callaghan at the address at the bottom: Deadline for submission: 8 April 2000 Notice of acceptance: 8 May 2000 Camera ready paper due: 8 June 2000 The European Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL) and SIGDIAL have endorsed the meeting and endorsement has been sought from ELSNET and support from the European Commission. Informal inquiries to: Yorick Wilks 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/~yorick