Corpora: IMPACTS in Natural Language Generation - 1st Call for Participation

[Stephan Busemann]

                     FIRST CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

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                                IMPACTS
                    in Natural Language Generation
                NLG Between Technology and Applications

                           July 26-28, 2000
                 - immediately preceding COLING 2000 -

                  Schloss Dagstuhl, Saarland, Germany

                   Homepage: http://impacts.dfki.de


           IMPACTS is supported as a "SIGGEN NLG Workshop".
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The IMPACTS workshop aims at studying, discussing, and clarifying the
relationships between NLG technologies and applications. The workshop
addresses
- researchers and developers in NLG,
- current and potential users of NLG applications,
- the interplay between statistical and rule-based NLG,
- the reusability of modules within NLG systems.

IMPACTS will be an ideal opportunity to discuss current issues and
future prospects in Natural Language Generation with prominent
researchers in the field, in the stimulating environment of Schloss
Dagstuhl.


   THE WORKSHOP

The workshop will consist of three types of sessions: presentation of
submitted papers, an invited talk and several "burning issues" sessions.

In order to implement our concept of a discussion-intensive event, we
have invited six "burning issues" presentations taking up the main topic
of the workshop. They will initiate interesting discussions within small
groups (10-15 participants), and last two hours up to half a day. A
plenum session will have reports of all discussions.

Sessions already confirmed will be chaired by Eduard Hovy (ISI, Univ. of
California, USA) and Chris Mellish (Univ. of Edinburgh, UK); more
details can be found soon at the IMPACTS web site. The invited talk will
be given by David McDonald (Brandeis University, USA).


   ACCOMODATION AND REGISTRATION

Please register soon; as Schloss Dagstuhl has limited capacity,
registration will be on a first come, first serve basis.

All participants will stay at Schloss Dagstuhl.  Cost is DM 450 (approx.
US$ 210) per person, including full board, in single rooms with a
shower.  Please register directly with the organizers using the simple
registration procedure outlined at http://impacts.dfki.de/#registration 
The early registration fee (before July 1, 2000) is DM 170 (approx. US$
80) and includes a copy of the proceedings. Late registration will cost
DM 220 (approx US$ 100).


   DATES

IMPACTS will take place from July 26-28, 2000 at the International
Conference and Research Center for Computer Science at Schloss Dagstuhl
(http://www.dagstuhl.de).  Arrival is on Tuesday, July 25. The workshop
will take until Friday, July 28, after lunch.

IMPACTS immediately precedes the events of COLING 2000 taking place in
Luxembourg, Saarbrücken, and Nancy. Schloss Dagstuhl is situated in the
Saarland, allowing participants to reach the COLING tutorials on July 29
conveniently.


   PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

John Bateman, University of Bremen, Germany
Tilman Becker, DFKI Saarbrücken, Germany (Program Co-Chair)
Stephan Busemann, DFKI Saarbrücken, Germany (Program Co-Chair)
Robert Dale, Language Technology Pty Ltd and Macquarie University,
Australia
Laurence Danlos, LORIA, France
Michael Elhadad, Ben-Gurion University, Israel
Eduard Hovy, ISI, University of Southern California, USA
Richard Kittredge, CoGenTex Inc., USA
Inderjeet Mani, Mitre Corporation, USA
David D. McDonald, Gensym Corporation, USA
Cecile Paris, CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, Macquarie
  University, Australia
Owen Rambow, AT&T, USA
Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen, UK
Donia Scott, ITRI, University of Brighton, UK