+++ INTERSPEECH 2015 Update – and a look back! +++

Dear colleagues,

The regular paper deadline for Interspeech 2015 in Dresden is only 2 months away, so we hope that you are preparing for your submissions. We have received an impressive number of Special Session and Challenges proposals. The list of preliminarily accepted proposals, together with more information on each session and its organizers, can be found under http://interspeech2015.org/events/special-sessions/. Thus, in case that your interests fall within the area of one of these Special Sessions or Challenges, consider submitting there.

Please note that March 20 is – apart from the general paper deadline – also the deadline for tutorial proposals. More details on tutorial proposal submissions can be found under http://interspeech2015.org/calls/call-for-tutorials/. The deadline for Show & Tell papers is then April 17.

The current list of Satellite Workshops will be updated successively and can be found under http://interspeech2015.org/events/workshops/.

From now on, we will have a monthly view back to the history of speech communication and technology which happened in Dresden. On behalf of the organizing team, Sebastian Möller (General Chair)

A View from Dresden onto the History of Speech Communication

Part 1: The historic acoustic-phonetic collection

Information Technology at the TU Dresden goes back to Heinrich Barkhausen (1881–1956), the 'father of the electron valve', who taught from 1911 to 1953. Speech research in a narrower sense started with the development of a vocoder in the 1950s. Walter Tscheschner (1927–2004) performed his extensive investigations on the speech signal using components of the vocoder. In 1969, a scientific unit for Communication and Measurement was founded in Dresden. It is the main root of the present Institute of Acoustics and Speech Communication. W. Tscheschner was appointed Professor of Speech Communication and started with research in speech synthesis and recognition, which today continues.

Numerous objects from the history of Speech Communication in Dresden, but also from other parts of Germany, are preserved at the historic acoustic-phonetic collection of the TU Dresden. Until the opening of Interspeech 2015, we will present interesting exhibits from the collection in this newsletter monthly. Today, we give an introduction.

The historic acoustic-phonetic collection of the TU Dresden consists of three parts:

• Objects that illustrate the development of acoustics and speech technology at the TU Dresden. The most interesting devices are speech synthesizers of various technologies.

• Objects illustrating the development of experimental phonetics from 1900 until the introduction of the computer. The items of this part were collected by D. Mehnert from different phonetics laboratories and rehabilitation units throughout Germany.

• Objects which were formerly collected at the Phonetics Institute of Hamburg University. This important collection, which was founded by Giulio Panconcelli-Calzia, was transferred to Dresden in 2005 in accordance with a contract due to the closing of the Hamburg institute.

The collection is presented in the Barkhausenbau at the main campus of the TU Dresden. Recently, it is moving to new rooms which are more convenient for the presentation. The newly installed collection will be re-opened at the opportunity of Interspeech 2015.

For this purpose, we cordially invite to a workshop on the history of speech communication, called HSCR2015, which will be held as a satellite event of Interspeech 2015 at September 4/5, 2015, in the Technical Museum of the City of Dresden. It is organized by the special interest group (SIG) on 'The History of Speech Communication Sciences', which is supported by the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) and the International Phonetic Association (IPA). More information on the workshop is presented on http://www.sig-hist.org/.

Rüdiger Hoffmann (Local Chair)