Dear friends of ISCA,

As I am writing these words, INTERSPEECH 2022 has just closed its doors. Considering that it was the first INTERSPEECH conference since the beginning of the pandemic with a substantial in-person presence, it is indeed an enormous success that the organizers attracted close to 1600 in-person participants, plus approx. 700 virtual participants, to our major community event. With a record number of submissions, it was also able to feature an excellent scientific program, compiled by the TPC Chairs Kyogu Lee, Lori Lamel, Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, Karen Livescu and Okim Kang, with the support of many Area Chairs and even more reviewers. To this already top-level program were added four keynotes – one by our ISCA medalist Lin-Shan Lee, six survey talks, eight tutorials, and 12 special sessions, as well as industry talks, satellite events and many student- and postdoc-organized events. On behalf of ISCA and the entire membership, I would like to thank our General Chair Hanseok Ko, as well as our General Co-Chair John H.L. Hansen, for their efforts in making this major event a great success!

The special setting of INTERSPEECH 2022 has highlighted significant challenges we as a scientific association are facing. One such challenge is the effort which organizers can put into hybrid set-ups. Audio-visual equipment enabling interactive participation for virtual participants has been found to be too costly to be established for all sessions. The ISCA Advisory Council has also stressed that the primary focus for INTERSPEECH organizers should be on in-person participation; thus, virtual participants will – for the time being – have to live with reduced interactive offers if we want to keep participation fees accessibly low. A second challenge is the large number of submissions (with 2140 papers undergoing review this year), and the resulting necessity for a substantial pool of qualified reviewers. We thus rely on all of your expertise to ensure the high quality of our scientific program, and encourage you to subscribe to our reviewer database at https://isca-speech.org/iscareviewers/reviewer.php (if you have not yet done so). A third challenge is the management of such a high number of papers and reviewers within a short period of time. We envisage a move to a different paper management system in the near future, in order to achieve the best-possible matches between papers and reviewers, as well as to take advantage of additional functionalities for the TPC and Area Chairs.

Lastly, I would like to remind you about the workshop that several past ISCA presidents will organize in honor of Sadaoki Furui, on November 29, 2022; see the ISCA front page for more details.

I wish you all a good read of this ISCApad, as usual excellently compiled by Chris Wellekens.

Sebastian Möller Meg Zellers

ISCA president ISCA conferences