Dear ISCA Members,

As our president, Jean-Francois Bonastre, pointed out in his message
in ISCApad 2/2012, our association is financially healthy and has been
so for a number of years. This is primarily owed to the success of our
Interspeech conferences, which have attracted an increasing number of
participants, reaching an all-time peak in Florence 2011 with 1435
submissions and 1250 delegates, as well as to the generosity of some
Interspeech organizers who have donated their profit to the
Association.

The ISCA board has been trying to create new ways in which our members
can benefit from the good financial situation. JF Bonastre already
explained that the Portland team has succeeded in lowering
significantly the registration fees for Interspeech 2012, based on an
agreement with the ISCA board that increases the financial risk taken
by ISCA in the organization of conferences. We have also reduced by
50% the fixed share due to ISCA for each student Interspeech
participant, and raised from 20 to 40 the number of student travel
grants.

In addition to these measures, the ISCA board has started several new
initiatives, including the ISCA Lectures Program and ISCA Training
Schools in Speech Communication. We will lend significant financial
support (EUR 10,000 each) to a maximum of three Training Schools per
year. We are also investing into a new segment of the ISCA archive by
having the keynote lectures at Interspeech conferences video-recorded
and post-processed, with synchronization of talker and slides, by a
professional producer. This material will be made available as the
ISCA Video Archives and thus complement the popular archive of
proceedings compiled by Wolfgang Hess.

Please contribute by sending us your ideas for further investments in
our thriving research community.

Sincerely,
Bernd Möbius