2nd Call for Papers

LREC 2008 Workshop on

"Multimodal corpora:
 From Models of Natural Interaction to Systems and Applications"

** NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 19th **

Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Marrakech (Morocco)
http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2008/

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DESCRIPTION

A 'Multimodal Corpus' targets the recording and annotation of several communication modalities such as speech, hand gesture, facial expression, body posture, etc. Theoretical issues are also addressed, given their importance to the design of multimodal corpora.

This workshop continues the successful series of similar workshops at LREC 00, 02, 04 and 06 also documented in a special issue of the Journal of Language Resources and Evaluation due to come out in spring 2008. There is an increasing interest in multimodal communication and multimodal corpora as visible by European Networks of Excellence and integrated projects such as HUMAINE, SIMILAR, CHIL, AMI, CALLAS. Furthermore, the success of recent conferences and workshops dedicated to multimodal communication (ICMI, IVA, Gesture, PIT, Nordic Symposia on Multimodal Communication, Embodied Language Processing) and the creation of the Journal of Multimodal User Interfaces also testifies to the growing interest in this area, and the general need for data on multimodal behaviours.

The focus of this LREC'2008 workshop on multimodal corpora will be on models of natural interaction and their contribution to the design of multimodal systems and applications.

Topics to be addressed include, but are not limited to:
? Multimodal corpus collection activities (e.g. direction-giving dialogues, emotional behaviour, human-avatar interaction, human-robot interaction, etc.)
? Relations between modalities in natural (human) interaction and in human-computer interaction
? Application of multimodal corpora to the design of multimodal and multimedia systems
? Fully or semi-automatic multimodal annotation, using e.g. motion capture and image processing, and its integration with manual annotations
? Corpus-based design of systems that involve human-like modalities either in input (Virtual Reality, motion capture, etc.) and output (virtual characters)
? Multimodal interaction in specific scenarios, e.g. group interaction in meetings
? Coding schemes for the annotation of multimodal corpora
? Evaluation and validation of multimodal annotations
? Methods, tools, and best practices for the acquisition, creation, management, access, distribution, and use of multimedia and multimodal corpora
? Interoperability between multimodal annotation tools (exchange formats, conversion tools, standardization)
? Metadata descriptions of multimodal corpora
? Automated multimodal fusion and/or generation (e.g., coordinated speech, gaze, gesture, facial expressions)
? Analysis methods tailored to multimodal corpora using e.g. statistical measures or data mining
We expect the output of this workshop to be:
1) deeper understanding of theoretical issues and research questions related to verbal and non-verbal communication that multimodal corpora should address,
2) larger consensus on how such corpora should be built in order to provide useful and usable answers to research questions,
3) shared knowledge of how the corpora are contributing to multimodal and multimedia system design, and
4) an updated view of state-of-the-art research on multimodal corpora.

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IMPORTANT DATES

- February 19th: *new deadline* for submission (full paper)
- March 16th: Notification of acceptance
- March 30th: Camera ready version of papers
- May 27th: Workshop

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SUBMISSIONS

The workshop will consist primarily of paper presentations, posters, demos and discussion/working sessions.

The .pdf file should be submitted
on the workshop web site: https://www.softconf.com/LREC2008/MMC/submit.html
*and* via email to MARTIN@LIMSI.FR and PATRIZIA@CST.DK

Submissions should be 4 pages long, must be in English,
and follow the submission guidelines and MS Word .doc template to be available from
http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2008/

Demonstrations of multimodal corpora and related tools are encouraged as well (a demonstration outline of 2 pages can be submitted).

As soon as possible, authors are encouraged to send to MARTIN@LIMSI.FR and PATRIZIA@CST.DK
a brief email indicating their intention to participate, including their contact information and the topic they intend to address in their submissions. Proceedings of the workshop will be printed by the LREC Local Organising Committee.

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TIME SCHEDULE AND REGISTRATION FEE

The workshop will consist of a morning session and an afternoon session.
There will be time for collective discussions.
For this full-day Workshop, the registration fee will be specified on
http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2008/

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ORGANISING COMMITTEE

MARTIN Jean-Claude, LIMSI-CNRS, France
PAGGIO Patrizia, Univ. of Copenhagen, Denmark
KIPP Michael, DFKI, Saarbrücken, Germany
HEYLEN Dirk, Univ. Twente, The Netherlands

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PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Jan Alexandersson, D
Jens Allwood, SE
Elisabeth Ahlsén, SE
Elisabeth André, D
Gerard Bailly, F
Stéphanie Buisine, F
Susanne Burger, USA
Loredana Cerrato, SE
Piero Cosi, I
Morena Danieli, I
Nicolas Ech Chafai, F
John Glauert, UK
Kostas Karpouzis, G
Alfred Kranstedt, D
Peter Kuehnlein, NL
Daniel Loehr, USA
Maurizio Mancini, F
Costanza Navarretta, DK
Catherine Pelachaud, F
Fabio Pianesi, I
Isabella Poggi, I
Laurent Romary, D
Ielka van der Sluis, UK
Rainer Stiefelhagen, D
Peter Wittenburg, NL
Massimo Zancanaro, I