<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><p align="center" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px;text-align:center"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US"><b>SIGDIAL 2014 CONFERENCE</b><br>
</span><b><span lang="EN-US">Wednesday, June 18 to Friday, June 20, 2014 </span></b></span></p><p align="center" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px;text-align:center"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US">The 15th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialog will be<br>
</span>co-located with the 8th International Conference on Natural Language Generation (<a href="http://inlg2014.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">INLG 2014</a>) in Philadelphia, PA, USA and immediately preceding ACL 2014.</span></p>
<p align="center" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px;text-align:center"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US"> </span></b><span lang="EN-US"> <a href="http://www.sigdial.org/workshops/conference15/" target="_blank">http://www.<span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">sigdial</span>.org/workshops/conference15</a></span></span></p>
<p align="center" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px;text-align:center"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br></span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<b><span lang="EN-US">PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: </span></b><span lang="EN-US">Sunday, 9 March 2014 (23:59, GMT-11)</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">CALL FOR PAPERS<br>
<br></span></b>The 2014 SIGDIAL conference continues a series of fourteen conferences, providing a regular forum for the presentation of cutting edge research across the areas of discourse and dialog and attracting a diverse set of participants from academia and industry. The conference is sponsored by the SIGdial organization, which serves as the Special Interest Group on discourse and dialog for both ACL and ISCA.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">KEYNOTE SPEAKERS<br><br></span></b>Prof. Lillian Lee from Cornell University, and<br>
Prof. Steve Young from the University of Cambridge.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">TOPICS OF INTEREST<br><br></span></b>We welcome formal, corpus-based, system-building or analytical work on discourse and dialog including but not restricted to the following themes and topics:</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">- Discourse Processing and Dialog Systems</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">- Corpora, Tools and Methodology</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">- Pragmatic and/or Semantic Modeling</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">- Dimensions of Interaction</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US">- Open Domain Dialog</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US">- Style, Voice and Personality in Spoken Dialog and Written Text</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">- Applications of Dialog and Discourse Processing Technology</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">- Novel Methods for Generation Within Dialog for a joint special session with INLG</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">SPECIAL SESSIONS<br>
<br></span></b>There will be one special session co-located with <a href="http://inlg2014.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">INLG</a> on the morning of June 20th. There will be a second special session on the <a href="http://camdial.org/~mh521/dstc/" target="_blank">Dialogue State Tracking Challenge (DSTC)</a><b>. </b> Special session paper submissions will undergo regular SIGdial review process.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">IMPORTANT DATES<br></span></b></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">Long, Short and Demonstration</span></b><br>
</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"></span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">Paper Submission Deadline: </span></b><span lang="EN-US"> Sunday, 9 March 2014 (23:59, GMT-11)</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">Paper Notification: </span></b><span lang="EN-US"> Friday, 18 April 2014</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">Final Paper Due</span></b><span lang="EN-US"></span></span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">- For papers accepted subject</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> to receiving mentoring Wednesday, 14 May 2014</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">- For accepted papers Friday, 23 May 2014</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">Conference </span></b><span lang="EN-US"> Wednesday, June 18, 2014 to Friday, June 20, 2014</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">SUBMISSIONS</span></b></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">Papers</span></b> </span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">The program committee welcomes the submission of long papers, short papers, and demonstration descriptions. All accepted submissions will be published in the conference proceedings.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Long papers may, at the discretion of the technical program committee, be accepted for oral or poster presentation. They must be no longer than 8 pages, including title, content, and examples. Two additional pages are allowed for references and appendices, which may include extended example discourses or dialogs, algorithms, graphical representations, etc.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Short papers will be presented as posters. They should be no longer than 4 pages, including title and content. One additional page is allowed for references and appendices.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Demonstration papers should be no longer than 3 pages, including references. A separate one-page document should be provided to the program co-chairs for demonstration descriptions, specifying furniture and equipment needed for the demo.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US">Authors of a submission may designate their paper to be considered for a SIGDIAL special session, which would highlight a particular area or topic. All papers will undergo regular peer review.</span> </span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US">Papers that have been or will be submitted to other meetings or publications must provide this information (see submission format). A paper accepted for presentation at SIGDIAL 2014 must not have been presented at any other meeting with publicly available proceedings. Any questions regarding submissions can be sent to the program co-chairs at </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)">program-chairs[at]<a href="http://sigdial.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">sigdial</span>.org</a></span><span lang="EN-US">.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Authors are encouraged to submit additional supportive material such as video clips or sound clips and examples of available resources for review purposes.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Submission is electronic using paper submission software.</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">FORMAT</span></b><span lang="EN-US"></span></span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">All long, short, and demonstration submissions should follow the two-column ACL 2014 format. We strongly recommend the use of ACL LaTeX style files or Microsoft Word style files tailored for the ACL 2014 conference. Submissions must conform to the official ACL 2014 style guidelines (<a href="http://www.cs.jhu.edu/ACL2014/CallforPapers.htm" target="_blank">http://www.cs.jhu.edu/ACL2014/CallforPapers.htm</a>), and they must be electronic in PDF. As in most previous years, submissions will not be anonymous.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">MENTORING SERVICE</span></b></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US">For several years, the SIGDIAL conference has offered a mentoring service. Submissions with innovative core ideas that may need language (English) or organizational assistance will be flagged for "mentoring" and conditionally accepted with recommendation to revise with a mentor. An experienced mentor who has previously published in the SIGDIAL venue will then help the authors of these flagged papers prepare their submissions for publication. Any questions about the mentoring service can be addressed to the mentoring chair at </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)">mentoring[at]<a href="http://sigdial.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">sigdial</span>.org</a></span><span lang="EN-US">.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">STUDENT SUPPORT</span></b></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">SIGdial also offers a limited number of scholarships for students presenting a paper accepted to the conference. Application materials will be posted at the conference website.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">BEST PAPER AWARDS</span></b></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">In order to recognize significant advancements in dialog and discourse science and technology, SIGDIAL will recognize two best paper awards. A selection committee consisting of prominent researchers in the fields of interest will select the recipients of the awards.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">SPONSORSHIP</span></b></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><span lang="EN-US">SIGDIAL offers a number of opportunities for sponsors. For more information, email the conference organizers at </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)">sponsor-chair[at]<a href="http://sigdial.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">sigdial</span>.org</a></span><span lang="EN-US">.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">DIALOG AND DISCOURSE</span></b></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">SIGDIAL authors are encouraged to submit their research to the journal Dialog and Discourse, which is endorsed by SIGdial.</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b><span lang="EN-US">ORGANIZING COMMITTEE</span></b><span lang="EN-US"></span></span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
General Co-Chairs</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Kallirroi Georgila, University of Southern California, USA</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Matthew Stone, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Technical Program Co-Chairs</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Helen Hastie, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Ani Nenkova, University of Pennsylvania, USA</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Mentoring Chair</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Svetlana Stoyanchev, AT&T Research Labs, USA</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Local Chair</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Keelan Evanini, Educational Testing Service, USA</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Sponsorships Chair</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Giuseppe Di Fabbrizio, Amazon.com, USA</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">SIGdial President</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Amanda Stent, Yahoo! Labs, USA</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">SIGdial Vice President</span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Jason Williams, Microsoft Research, USA</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </span></p><p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">SIGdial Secretary/Treasurer</span></p>
<p style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Kristiina Jokinen, University of Helsinki, Finland</span></p></div></div>