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/
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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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