ASRU 2015 welcomes proposals for challenge tasks. In a challenge task, participants compete or

collaborate to accomplish a common or shared task. The results of the challenge will be presented at

the ASRU workshop event in the form of papers reporting the achievements of the participants,

individually and/or as a whole. We invite organizers to concretely propose such challenge tasks in

the form of a 1-2 page proposal. The proposal should include a description of

● the task and its intended goal

● the task organizers and key contact people for the various aspects of the task

● the data or shared resource that is to be used

○ Details on the availability or its collection process

○ Required labeling or other pre-processing and the expected timeline of this process

○ Privacy concerns around the data or resource as it will be released to all participants

○ Licensing terms or conditions for participants

● the evaluation process, how will a test set be defined, what figure of merit will be used to

● measure success, and how will a common scoring process be put in place to arrive at

● comparable results for all participants

● the timeline; when will training/test material be made available, when are participant

(sub-)system submissions due

● the expected (number of) participants, and whether this is a new installment of an existing

challenge or a new challenge series altogether

● any special requests or circumstances, e.g., required timing or format of the challenge

execution

Participants will report their achievements in the form of regular format paper submissions to the

ASRU workshop. These submissions will undergo the normal ASRU review process, but the

organizers can suggest reviewers that would be particularly insightful for the challenge subject

matter. Accepted papers will be organized in a special session at the conference (in poster format;

the only format used at ASRU). The accepted papers will appear in the ASRU proceedings.

Given the possibly lengthy process of organizing and executing a special challenge, prospective

organizers are encouraged to submit proposals as soon as possible. The ASRU technical program

committee will make acceptance decisions based on a rolling schedule -- i.e., proposals are reviewed

as soon as they come in. Challenge proposals should be sent to Technical Program co-chair Michiel

Bacchiani at michiel@google.com, and will be accepted until the end of 2014.