Dear friends of ISCA,

Before many of us leave for the summer break, this ISCApad will feed you with the latest information on events, developments and achievements in your community.

Your association will experience some changes through the ISCA Board elections: Beena Ahmed (Australia), Tom Bäckström (Finland), and Esther Klabbers (USA) have been newly elected to the Board, and Nobuaki Minematsu (Japan), Jianhua Tao (China) and Meg Zellers (Germany) have been re-elected for another period on the Board. Congratulations to all who have been elected! I am sure that you will make the work of our association even more productive and engaging.

While there will be some constancy with a larger number of members continuing to serve on the Board, there will also be some changes – parts of them have already been initiated in the current Board: We will continue to update our software tools, with a new membership administration software and website to be operational in autumn; this will hopefully avoid longer system outages as we have experienced recently with credit card payments. On the Technical Committee side, we will continue to professionalize the handling of an ever-growing number of scientific papers, and the handover of knowledge between Interspeech TPCs; Simon King and his team, together with our Scientific Coordinator Antoine Serrurier, have thankfully paved the way by initiating tools which will continue to be used in the years to come. We are discussing a new award structure, honoring members of different career stages. We will continue our efforts to create an ISCA foundation to financially support parts of our community.

In addition to continuing efforts, there will be new targets addressed by the new board. As I will not be a member of the new board after having served for two periods, I leave it to the upcoming president and their team to define what is deemed most important and helpful to improve services for all ISCA members. I am sure that a new way of communication with you – and amongst you – will help to make these activities more visible and experienceable to you. My term as your president will finish at the end of the General Assembly to which all of you are invited on Monday, August 21, 2023, 17h00-18h30 Dublin time. The event will be in person in the Dublin Conference Center, but for those members who cannot participate in person, there will be a zoom link with chat so that you can participate in writing in the discussions, and also vote remotely. The latter might be important as we will vote proposed changes to our statutes. More information will follow with the official invitation which will be sent to you by Emmanuelle Foxonet.

 We look to welcoming you all to Dublin, IR for ISCA Interspeech 2023 this August 20-24: https://www.interspeech2023.org/

 I wish you a very good read of this ISCApad, as usual nicely compiled thanks to Chris Wellekens, and a great summer. Again, hopefully we will see all of you in person in Dublin for Interspeech 2023.

 Sebastian Möller

ISCA President