Infrastructures for Global Collaboration
Infrastructures for Global Collaboration |
|
ELSNET is the European Network of Excellence in Human Language Technologies. Its main objective is to advance human language technologies in a broad sense by bringing together Europe's key players in research, development, integration or deployment in the field of language and speech technology and neighbouring areas. The network's role is to offer an environment that allows for optimal exploitation of the available human and intellectual resources in order to advance the field. This environment comprises a number of structures (committees, special interest groups), actions (summer schools, workshops) and services (web site, email lists, newsletter, information dissemination, knowledge brokerage). ELSNET has been funded by the European Commission's ESPRIT and Language Engineering Programmes since 1991, and is now supported by the new Human Language Technologies programme.
Language and speech technology are different from most other technologies in that the complexity of the problems addressed ('how to gain enough insight in human language behaviour in order to be able to automate certain communication tasks') is multiplied by the number of languages (every language comes with its own unique problems), and even by its square if one thinks of communication across language barriers.
At the same time it is clear that solutions found for problems in one language may be fully or partially portable to other languages.
Within the European Union, the above (and other) observations have led to the creation of major R&D programmes such as Language Engineering, and Human Language Technologies, where parties from all over Europe (and even outside) join forces in order to address the common problems. In addition, a number of infrastructures have been set up at the European level, such as ELRA (dealing with creating, sharing and distributing language resources), ELSNET (a network of key players in the European field of human language technologies, aiming at sharing information and expertise), and EAGLES/ISLE (aimed at developing standards in an international context).
The existence of transnational infrastructures is not limited to Europe, as is demonstrated by e.g. the main international professional organisations in the field of language (ACL) and speech (ISCA) technology, and the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC), but what is lacking is a clear overview of what transnational infrastructures exist world-wide, and how these infrastructures can be optimally exploited for global collaboration.
This workshop will address the following questions:
The intended output is a strategic report, containing an analysis of the present situation, and an outline scenario for steps to be taken (actions, actors, calendar). The workshop should be seen as a first consultation and round-table discussion on this topic, and will be followed by similar actions at future events, where other parts of the language and speech communities (both thematic and geographic) will be consulted. Reports on this and subsequent workshops will be published on ELSNET's website http://www.elsnet.org, with an explicit invitation to the whole community to provide feedback and comments.