GENERAL ASSEMBLYINTERSPEECH 2008

Brisbane, Australia                                                                                                                                                        

Agenda

1. Opening Remarks and approval of the Minutes of the 2007 General Assembly (Antwerp)

2. President's Report

3. Treasurer's Report

4. Approval of Reports

5. ISCA: Goals for 2008-2009

6. Comments, Suggestions and Questions from ISCA Members

7. Announcement of Next ISCA General Assembly

8. Any Other Business

1. Opening Remarks and approval of the Minutes of the 2006 General Assembly (Pittsburgh)

2. President's Report3. Treasurer's Report4. Approval of Reports5. Announcements of Changes to the ISCA Board6. ISCA: Goals for 2007-87. Announcement of Next ISCA General Assembly8. Any Other Business9. Handover to the New President

Minutes of the 2007 General Assembly in Antwerp, Belgium, 29 August 2007, 6:15 pm

President’s Report• The ISCA Board• Recent Board Meetings• Secretariat and Membership• Membership Services and Web• The ISCA Online Archive• Workshops• International Affairs• Industry Liaison• Liaison with other Organizations• Conferences• Grants and Awards• Student Liaison• Publications• SIGs• Others

Isabel TrancosoPresident

ISCA Board Ex officio

President:: Isabel Trancoso

Vice-Pres. / ITWRs:Jean-François Bonastre

Secretary:David House

Treasurer:Bernd Möbius

Conferences:Tanja Schultz

Membership Services:Eva Hajicova

International Affairs:Lin-shan Lee

SIGs:Michael Picheny

Liaison w/ other orgs:Yoshinori Sagisaka

Grants & Awards: Alan Black

Education / Website: Helen Meng

Ex-President:: Julia Hirschberg

Archive Wolfgang Hess

ISCApad:: Chris Wellekens

Recent Board Meetings

• Mar. 2006: Virtual• Jun. 2006: Virtual• Sept.2006: Pittsburgh (2)• Dec. 2006: Virtual• Jan. 2007: Virtual• April 2007: Virtual• Aug. 2007: Antwerp (2)• Dec. 2007: Virtual• June 2008: Virtual

Secretariat and Membership

• Direct contact with members• Membership database• Financial transactions and administration

– Support for ITRWs– Membership dues

• Web content coordination• Documentation of ISCA board meetings• Elections to the Board and Advisory Council• ISCA Statutes and Bylaws

Please give us input and suggestions either this week at the ISCA Booth or later: secretariat@isca-speech.org

David HouseISCA Secretary

Manu FoxonetAdministrative

Assistant

Membership Development

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Membership Services and Web• Support for applications, updates, renewals and password

requestsEva Hajicova

Helen Meng

Membership Services and Web• Member survey online Eva Hajicova

Web: Maintenance and Updates• Ongoing revamp including

– Membership services support– Online forms– Facilities for webpage updates– Undertaken by Matt Bridger

(Mdb Web & Data Solutions)

• Information updates– Emmanuelle Foxonet, ISCA administrator

Helen Meng

The ISCA Online Archive• Contains all former INTERSPEECH (EUROSPEECH and

ICSLP) conferences and all ITRWs and ETRWs from 1987 to 2008 in machine-readable form

• 100 events (currently more than 10 per year)• Available on website since August 2003

http://www.isca-speech.org/archive/index.html – Abstracts accessible for everybody– Full papers accessible for members only– Use your individual ISCA password to access

• Since 2007 linked to Google Scholar, thanks to David Gelbart and the Student Committee

Wolfgang Hess

Main Page

Event Page

Abstract/Paper

Archive Structure

ISCA Tutorial & Research Workshops (ITRWs)

2008

• 5 ITRWs

• 11 other wrk/conf. co-sponsored

Contact ISCA for new event proposals

workshops@isca-speech.org

New service package

(soon to be available) – Secretariat support

– Online banking service

– Online registration

– Small monetary advance

– Web/Mail announcement

– (Archive)

-> Charge per participant per workshop day

Jean-François Bonastre

2008• Odyssey, January 2008, South Africa – SPLC • Workshop on Speech Analysis and Processing for Knowledge

Discovery, June 2008, Denmark • Workshop on Experimental Linguistics, August 2008, Greece• SAPA (ITRW on Statistical And Perceptual Audition) , September

2008, Australia• AVSP (Auditory-Visual Speech Processing), September 2008,

Australia2009

• SLATE (Workshop on Speech and Language Technology in Education ), September 2009, UK

Jean-François Bonastre

ISCA organized events

• SLTU'08, May 2008 (Vietnam) - SALTMIL • HSCMA 2008, May 2008 (Italy)• Speech Prosody 2008 – May 2008, (Brazil) - SPROSIG • LREC 2008 - May, 2008, (Morocco) - SALTMIL • JEP-TALN-RECITAL'08, June 2008 (France) - AFCP• YRRSDS 2008, June, 2008 (SAC)• PROPOR 2008 , September 2008 (Portugal) - SIGIL• WOCCI2008, October 2008 (CRETE/GREECE)• Workshop/Summer school dedicated to the memory of Christian

Benoît, October 2008 (France) • VJTH’2008 , November 2008 (Spain) - SIGIL • SLT 2008, December 2008 (India) – ILSP • NOLISP 09 - June 2009 , Spain

Jean-François Bonastre

ISCA supported events

ISCA International Affairs CommitteeLin-shan Lee

• ISCA decided to become an international organization in 1999 in Budapest

– Events and participants in them should not be confined to limited number of countries

– ISCA International Affairs Committee tries to fulfill that mandate• Targets regions currently under-represented in ISCA programs

• Subcommittees for these regions initiate region-specific efforts

– Sub-committee on Eastern Europe– Sub-committee on West Asia and North Africa– Sub-committee on South Asia– Sub-committee on Sub-Saharan Africa

ISCA International Affairs CommitteeLin-shan Lee

• Sample Action Items for the International Affairs Committee– Arranging Distinguished Lecturers Tours to give lectures in far away

regions – Disseminating information about regional research activities to the global

research community through ISCA channels– Distributing ISCA event and service information to researchers in their

region– Initiating ISCA-organized or co-sponsored events in their region– Recommending that students and young researchers in their region

apply for ISCA grants to attend events sponsored by ISCA– Establishing Regional Branches or Special Interest Groups– Developing ISCA relationships with relevant sister associations in their

regions

ISCA Distinguished Lecturers Program • Sending Distinguished Lecturers to different parts of the world when

invited by a Regional Subcommittee• Selection Committee chaired by Sadaoki Furui• Two Distinguished Lecturers selected Dec 2006 for 2007-08

– Chin-Hui Lee, Georgia Institute of Technologies, USA South Asia in Nov 2007 and Latin America in Oct 2008

– Marc Swerts, Tilburg University, the Netherlands Brazil in June 2007 and Southern Africa in July 2008

• One Distinguished Lecturer Selected Dec 2007 for 2008-2009– Richard M. Stern, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

India in Dec 2008

• Call for Nominations for new DLs by 15 Nov 2008

Sadaoki Furui

Lin-shan Lee

Industry Liaison• Maintains a List of Speech R&D Companies and Speech

Technology Vendors– multinational, national and regional companies

– provides job advertising service

• ISCA-Industry Roundtable with Senior R&D Managers of Multinational Speech R&D Companies

– September 2006 at INTERSPEECH in Pittsburgh

– September 2008 at INTERSPEECH in Brisbane

• Development of the ISCA-Industry Dialog– job market facilitation through ISCA publications, website, and

conference session sponsorships

– emerging issues of evaluation, quality and standard

– Dissemination of educational materials and open software

Michael Picheny

Liaison with other Organizations

• Liaison with organizations in speech and language

– ACL, ACLCLP, AFCP, AISV and ASJ

– Encouragement of joint activities

– Representation in NAACL&HLT

– Agreements for discounts on membership fees

• New partnership

– ASSTA (Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association)

Yoshinori Sagisaka

International Conferences

• Upcoming INTERSPEECH Conferences

– 2009, Brighton, UK

– 2010, Makuhari, Japan

– 2011, Florence, Italy

– Call for Proposals and guidelines available http://www.isca-speech.org/conferences.html (deadline: November 15th 2008)

• Call for volunteers reviewers

Tanja Schultz

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INTERSPEECH 2009 Brighton, UK 6-10 Sept.

“Speech and Intelligence”

“Towards spoken language processing for all – regardless of age, health conditions, languages, environment, etc.”

Grants September 2007-08Alan W Black

Total expenditure by ISCA: ~16242 E IS08: ~12000 E

Total: ~26242 E

Grants:549 events

(on 6 continents)

37 for IS08

17 other ISCA events

Countries: 21

By Country: (by institution of awardees)

USA 13, India 6, UK 6, China 4, Canada 3

NL 3, Aus 3, Finland 2, Germany 2, France 2

Iran, Malaya, Japan, Korea, Turkey, Thailand,

Belgium, Argentina, Brazil, Dijbouti, Portugal

By Continent:

NA: 16, Europe 17, Africa 1, SA 2, Asia 14, ANZ 2

Applications 106, awarded 54, award rate 51%

Awardees are:

Students

First time presentation

ISCA support event

One grant per Institution

(Exceptions sometimes made)

Please apply early through Online Application Website

Awards

ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement 2008 Recipient: Hiroya Fujisaki

ISCA Award for the best paper published in the Speech Communication Journal 2005-2007

To be announced at closing ceremony

3 ISCA Awards for the Best Student Paper of INTERSPEECH 2008

Short list of 9: Georg Heigold, Mitchell McLaren, Yen-Liang Shue, Peter Bell,Dongho Kim, Luciana Ferrer, Chi-Chun Lee, Michael

James Carne, Elizabeth Beach3 winners will be announced at closing ceremony

Alan W Black

ISCA Fellows

• Rolf Carlson • Paul Dalsgaard • Fred Jelinek• Hiroya Fujisaki• Sadaoki Furui • Björn Granström• Julia Hirschberg• Roger Moore• Mari Ostendorf• Louis Pols• Steve Young• Victor Zue

Alan W Black

Eva Hajikova

Student liaisonISCA Student Advisory Committee

Board members:

Helen Meng

Helen MengStudent Liaison: Interspeech 2008• Round Table and Lunch Event

– Organizers: ISCA SAC– Sponsors: ISCA, IS2008, IBM TJ Watson Research Center– Dates: Tue (Sep 23) and Thur (Sep 25)

• Co-organization– YRRSDS 2008

• Student Room Share Service– Help students find room-mates for the IS2008 conference– http://www.isca-students.org/forums/forums/interspeech/

interspeech_2008_room_share_service

Helen Meng

Web: Online Grant Application System (OGAS)

• Thanks to the ISCA-SAC– Especially Ebru Arisoy and Marco Piccolino-Boniforti

Online at ISCA website • Online at ISCA website

– http://www.isca-students.org/grants– First trial run for INTERSPEECH 2008

Publications• ISCA Pad on the website

– Edited by Christian Wellekens

• Authoring tool:ISCAPad Maker– By Laurence Liu and

Helen Meng– Converts text to

structured hyperlinks for easy access

Chris Wellekens Helen Meng

Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

SynSIG

Chinese SLP

AVISA

SaLTMILSIGdial

Michael Picheny

SIG-IL

ISCA SIG-ILSP

AFCP

AISV

SLaTE

SIGRU

Some special activities of SIGs• Annual meetings - regularly by several SIGs• Special issue of Speech Communication (2009) –

AVISA• International Conferences and Workshops - e.g.

ISCLSP 2008 co-organized by SIG-CSLP, JEP-TALN-RECITAL 2008 – AFCP, PROPOR 2008 (SIG-IL), XXXVII International Philological Conference (SIG-RU)

• Summer Schools – WISSAP 2008 (SIG-ILSP)• Thanks to the SIGs for their help in recruiting

reviewers!!

Treasurer’s Report• Positive result for 2008 (more income but more

expenditure due to new initiatives)

• Solid financial base for continued Interspeech and ITRW seed funding

• Emphasis on Internationalization

• Grant support increasing

• Consistent saving thanks to student Group initiatives

• More services on the website

Bernd MÖBIUS

Income 2006 2007INTERSPEECH DONATIONS

36,505Pittsburgh

ITRW SHARES 900

SALE PROCEEDINGS 762

MEMBERSHIP 40,130

INTEREST ON SAVINGS 242

TOTAL (€) 78,539

Note: Loan payments/repayments are not included in the income and expenditure tables

36,090Antwerp

0

483

73,159

2092

111,824

Expenditure (1) 2006 2007Salaries 35,803 37,100

Board Meetings 4,504 3,749

Secretariat 3,590 3,054

Grants 13,925 12,752

Special Interest Groups SIGs 0 2000

WEB maintenance 5,851 9,019

carried forward 63,673 67,674

Expenditure (2) 2006 2007

brought forward 63,673 67,674

Distinguish Lecturers - 3,373

Workshop support 1,000 1,000

Students 2,000 0

Other 0 0

Bank Costs 1,280 1,283

TOTAL (€) 67,953 73,330

INCOME OVER EXPENDITURE

2006 2007

Income 78,539

Expenditure 67,953

Income over Expenditure

10,586

111,824

73,330

38,494

Assets 31.12.2006 31.12.2007

BANK BALANCE 90,114 96,085

RECEIVABLES 35,000 35,000

TOTAL ASSETS (€) 90,114 96,085

Liabilities & EquityPAYABLES - -

EQUITY (€) 125,114 131,085

For several months each year, ISCA has loans to 1 or 2 Interspeech conferences and 1 or 2 workshops outstanding. Assets >€82k are required to maintain a positive cash balance.

Conclusions• ISCA is financially sound - assets slightly growing.• ISCA will continue to provide loans for Interspeech

conferences and ITRW workshops.• ISCA is in a position to gradually enhance its support

for grants, international actions and groups, and new initiatives.

• New ideas are most welcome!

Approval of Reports

• President‘s Report

• Treasurer‘s Report

Goals for 2008-9To stimulate international participation in ISCA

Distinguished Lecturers program

Remote access to lectures

Regional sub-committees

To stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration in new areas of research

To promote high standards in ISCA’s conferences and workshops

To understand members’ needs better and increase community involvement, namely by creating sub-committees

To support student-centered activities

To improve current ISCA web-based services and create new ones

Comments, Suggestions and Questions from ISCA Members

Next ISCA General Assembly

INTERSPEECH 2009

Brighton, UK, September 6-10, 2009

Any Other Business?