____________________________________________________________________________ EACL-03 Workshop on Dialogue Systems: interaction, adaptation and styles of management Budapest, Hungary, April 13-14 2003 (Just preceding the 11th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics) _____________________________________________________________________________ Introduction The two-day workshop will focus on adaptation and learning in intelligent interactive systems and especially on the new and interdisciplinary techniques and applications that are needed to realize such systems. The question of dialogue management style has become an important issue in the field, and the workshop aims at further discussion on how dialogue models in conversational systems should be developed: can dialogue management benefit from a learning strategy and, if so, will the systems be language independent. As we move towards systems that are more plausibly conversational in nature we are faced with questions and issues that concern how to manage a dialogue. The last 30 years has seen a range of approaches to dialogue systems from the simplicity of Eliza (Weizenbaum 1966) ---originally a network but which we would probably now manage with a few simple finite state rules--- on up to high functionality multi-modal systems. As we look at the design of dialogue systems over many years, we can ask if the underlying components are now basically agreed and the rest is notational variant or taste in logic? If we are in that state, it may be only a sign of maturity, as in Information Extraction (IE) when Hobbs argued successfully about 1992 that all IE systems were then basically isomorphic. On one hand, the notions of adaptation and learning have become important issues when working with spoken interactive systems, and on the other hand, machine learning research has matured so as to provide tools and techniques for system designers and developers to build adaptive and learning systems. The goal of the workshop is to provide a forum for discussing how these aspects can be combined in spoken dialogue systems, addressing especially such questions as what kind of adaptation and learning is necessary, desirable, and possible for speech interface systems, and how the new learning techniques can help in achieving these goals. An important issue is also to clarify the notion of user-centered design when building flexible and adaptive systems: as it is not only the user who should adapt to the (limits of the) system properties, the question that system builders and designers must address is where and when the system needs to adapt to the user. User modelling is thus an essential part of interaction management in intelligent systems, and one of the workshop aims is to investigate the limits and relation of the user models to interaction models in general. Furthermore, there are various types of architectures and frameworks that have been proposed to accommodate adaptation and learning aspects into spoken language interfaces, and the workshop aims to share experience, as well as successful and unsuccessful solutions. The workshop will address the unique requirements that the adaptive and learning view-points pose for dialogue research, interface design and system development. It offers a platform for discussion of Dialogue Systems - a topic that is becoming increasingly prominent in the field of Natural Language Processing, and in particular, it will focus on two related issues: 1) The adaptation and learning in intelligent interactive systems and the techniques and applications that are needed to realize such systems. 2) The approaches to Dialogue Management. In particular, whether Dialogue Management Systems (DMS) are now generic and if not whether there are real differences in approach. Topics of Interest The workshop will bring together researchers and system developers who share an interest in intelligent spoken dialogue systems. The target audience consists of colleagues who work on theoretical and practical issues concerning adaptation and learning in dialogue systems, and who wish to discuss and exchange ideas from different viewpoints. We also expect the workshop to be of interest to interface designers who want to expand their expertise to specific system internal modelling issues, as well as to those dialogue researchers who are interested in exploring the possibilities of integrating research into larger systems. We solicit papers from a number of research areas, including but not limited to: - How can adaptive techniques be used in spoken dialogue systems? - How effective is learning for Dialogue systems? - What kind of limitations and challenges are there for applying machine learning research in practical dialogue systems? - Is Dialogue Management language independent? - What kind of representations and type of information are necessary for adaptation? - What kind of requirements are there for the architecture and general development framework of adaptive systems? - Can we always effectively distinguish the roles of dialogue management components and general architectures for dialogue and language processing? - Are all dialogue systems the same underneath the surface or are there fundamental differences to approaching Dialogue Management? - Are there any specific requirements for adaptation in mobile environment? - What is the role of user modelling and integration of user models in dialogue systems? - What are future challenges for adaptive and learning systems? Workshop Format The 2-day workshop will include two thematic sessions that address the two main topics of the workshop. Both sessions will combine long and short presentations, demo sessions and extended discussions, and feature a few plenary presentations on central topics. The following thematic sessions are planned: Adaptation and learning in spoken dialogue systems Styles of dialogue management: are they really different? Submission of Papers and Abstracts The program committee welcomes the submission of papers describing both theoretical contributions and project implementations. We especially encourage papers that concern innovative frameworks and offer new, even controversial view-points for developing interactive systems that offer natural and rich interaction in an enjoyable and satisfactory manner. The papers must be no longer than 8 pages, including title page, examples, references, etc. In addition to this, two additional pages are allowed as an appendix which may include extended example discourses or dialogues, algorithms, graphical representations, etc. The papers should be sent electronically to the e-mail address: eacl-w6@dcs.shef.ac.uk The paper format is the same as used in EACL submission. Style files are available at http://www.elsnet.org/workshops/format.html Papers must be submitted in pdf format. The title page (no separate title page is needed) should include the following information: Title: Authors' names, affiliations, and email addresses; Preferred thematic session, if any. Abstract (short summary up to 5 lines); Important Dates Submission January 7, 2003 Notification January 28, 2003 Camera-ready papers February 13, 2003 Workshop April 13-14 2003 Websites Workshop website: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~roberta/eacl-W06.html EACL website: http://www.conferences.hu/EACL03/start.htm Workshop Publications All accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. Organising committee Kristiina Jokinen (co-chair) University of Art and Design Helsinki Media Lab Hämeentie 135 C 00560 Helsinki Finland email: kjokinen@uiah.fi Yorick Wilks (co-chair) University of Sheffield Computer Science Dept. Regent Court Sheffield S1 4DP UK email: yorick@dcs.shef.ac.uk Björn Gambäck SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science AB Box 1263 SE - 164 29 Kista, Sweden email: gamback@sics.se Bill Black UMIST Computation Department P.O. Box 88 Sackville Street Manchester M60 1QD UK email: wjb@co.umist.ac.uk Roberta Catizone University of Sheffield Computer Science Dept. Regent Court Sheffield S1 4DP UK email: R.Catizone@dcs.shef.ac.uk Programme Committee Jan Alexandersson, DFKI, Germany Peter Boda, Nokia Research Center, Finland Rolf Carlson, KTH, Sweden Morena Danieli, Loquendo, Italy Laila Dybkjaer, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark Wolfgang Minker, Daimler-Chrysler Research, Germany Arne Jonsson, University of Linkoping, Sweden Scott McGlashan, Pipebeach, Sweden Johanna Moore, University of Edinburgh, UK Allan Ramsay, UMIST UK Norbert Reithinger, DFKI, Germany Andrea Setzer, University of Sheffield, UK Alistair Sutcliffe, UMIST, UK Markku Turunen University of Tampere, Finland Tom Wachtel, Independent Consultant, Italy/UK Ingrid Zukerman, Monash University, Australia