****** DEADLINE EXTENSION: OCTOBER 7TH 2012 ***** Second Workshop on Advances in Text Input Methods (WTIM2) Collocated with the 24th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2012) http://research.microsoft.com/wtim2/ December 15th 2012, Mumbai, India Call for Papers (Submission due: October 7th, 2012) Workshop Description ==================== Methods of text input have entered a new era. The number of people who have access to computers and mobile devices is sky-rocketing in regions where people cannot type their native language characters directly. It has also become commonplace to input text not only through a keyboard but also through other different modes such as voice, hand-writing, multi-touch or gesture recognition. Multimodal interfaces that combine soft keyboards with gestures or speech are also becoming mainstream. Even when people type with a keyboard, it is done differently from a few years ago - an adaptive software keyboard, word prediction and spell correction are just a few examples of such recent changes in text input experience. Furthermore, clever and forgiving design of user interfaces for text input has become an important research topic, especially given the array of sensors and actuators available on todayfs mobile devices. Given the overall trend towards multi-tasking in everyday life, eyes-free text input methods that do not require constant visual attention is becoming increasingly important. These new challenges have many underlying NLP problems in common. For example, a high quality dictionary is called for, but it is far from obvious how to construct and maintain one. A dictionary also needs to be stored in some data structure, whose optimal designs may depend upon the usage. Prediction and spell correction can be very annoying if they are not smart enough. For many applications, user input can be very noisy (imagine voice recognition or typing on a small screen), so the input methods must be robust against such noise. Finally, there is no standard data set or evaluation metric, which is necessary for quantitative analysis of user input experience. This workshop is a sequel to the first Workshop on Advances in Text Input Methods that was organized in conjunction with IJCNLP 2011 (https://sites.google.com/site/wtim2011/). The success of the previous workshop and the overwhelming response and encouragement from the community motivate us to organize WTIM2, whose goals are similar to that of WTIM1, which is to bring together the developers and researchers of input technologies around the world, and share their innovations, research findings and issues across different applications, devices, modes and languages. The workshop aims to deepen our understanding of the field as a whole, and facilitate further innovation in each application area. Topics ====== We welcome submission on a wide range of topics and languages related to text input systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Roman script based phonetic input and soft keyboards for languages using non-Roman scripts * Transliteration-based approaches for phonetic text input * Input for soft keyboards and devices with hardware limitations and small form factors, such as mobile phones, game devices, tablet PCs. * Multimodal input and output: text input via speech, handwriting and/or touch gestures; audio and haptic feedback. * Input methods for users with special needs * Predictive input technologies: auto-completion, next word prediction and spell correction for text input * Personalization and customization of input methods * User feedback and community-specific data: understanding the user and usage for a better user experience, collection and analysis of user generated phonetic inputs * Research and practice of rule-based and/or statistical input methods * Measuring user experience in text input * Creation of data and resources for evaluation of input systems * Issues in commercial input engine deployment: data compression, cloud-based input, etc. Important Dates ================ * Paper submission deadline (for both long and short papers): October 7th, 2012 * Acceptance notification: November 7th, 2012 * Camera-ready deadline: November 15th, 2012 * Workshop: December 15th, 2012 Submission information ====================== Paper submission to WTIM 2012 will be accepted on or before October 7th, 2012 (11:59pm Samoa Time, UTC-11) in PDF format via the START system. The submission link is: https://www.softconf.com/coling2012/WTIM02/ Submissions should follow the instructions at the COLING website (http://www.coling2012-iitb.org/call_for_papers.php). Please use the following style files for formatting your submissions: * Latex style files: http://www.coling2012-iitb.org/doc/coling-latex.zip * Microsoft Word style files: http://www.coling2012-iitb.org/doc/coling-word.zip Long papers should not exceed 14 pages of content plus additional 2 pages for references, and should report original unpublished research. We also invite short papers on work in progress, an opinion piece or position paper, or proposals for system demonstrations. Short papers should not exceed 6 pages plus additional 2 pages for references. Short paper on system demonstration proposal should describe the system to be demonstrated, outline its components and working, and mention special needs if any for setting up the demonstration. On the submission page, you will be prompted to select an appropriate category for your paper: long research paper, short research paper, short position/opinion paper, demonstration proposal. Reviewing: Each long/short paper will be reviewed by three/two members from the program committee. The final selection will be made by the committee based on the reports of the reviewers. We will follow a double blind reviewing policy. Therefore, all submissions should be anonymous. Please, do not put any information that can potentially reveal the identity of the author. Dual submission policy: Authors can submit papers that are under review or has been submitted to another conference/workshop. However, upon acceptance of the paper, the authors have to decide whether they want to present the paper at WTIM or another forum. Presentation and Participation: At least one of the authors MUST register for the workshop to ensure the inclusion of the paper in the proceedings. It is also expected that at least one author for each accepted submission personally attends and presents the work at the workshop. There will be both oral and poster presentations. The mode of presentation will be decided later based on the suggestion of the program committee and has nothing to do with the technical quality of the paper. Organizing Co-chairs ==================== * Kalika Bali (Microsoft Research, India) * Monojit Choudhury (Microsoft Research, India) * Yoh Okuno (Swiftkey, Japan) Program Committee ================= * Achraf Chalabi (Microsoft ATLC, Egypt) * Hisami Suzuki (Microsoft Research Redmond) * Hiroshi Manabe (Self-employed) * Hiroyuki Tokunaga (Preferred Infrastructure) * Jugal Kalita (University of Colorado, Colorado Springs) * Jun Hatori (Apple) * Pushpak Bhattacharyya (IIT Bombay) * Richa (LDC-IL, Central Institute of Indian Languages Mysore) * Samit Bhattacharya (IIT Guwahati) * Sarvnaz Karimi (CSIRO, Sydney) * Shinsuke Mori (Kyoto University) * Sriganesh Madhvanath (HP Labs, India) * Taku Kudo (Google Japan) * Tim Paek (Microsoft Research, Redmond) * Vasudeva Varma (IIIT Hyderabad) * Virach Sornlertlamvanich (NECTEC) * Xianchao Wu (Baidu) Contact ======= For any queries or clarifications, please contact: wtim microsoft.com Website: http://research.microsoft.com/wtim2/