Blizzard Challenge 2012 Workshop

The Blizzard Challenge 2011 workshop is generously supported by Google

Friday 14th September 2012

The workshop will be at the same venue as Interspeech 2012 - the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower.

Call for participation

The Blizzard Challenge 2012 Workshop is the culmination of the Blizzard Challenge 2012 which is an open speech synthesis evaluation campaign using common data sets and a large listening test. The aims of the workshop are to present the results from the listening tests and for participants in the Challenge to describe their systems.

The workshop is a satellite of Interspeech 2012

Who can attend the workshop ?

The workshop is open to all and we encourage participation from anyone interested in speech synthesis.

Who can submit a paper to the workshop ?

All participants in the Challenge are expected to submit a paper describing their entry (even if they cannot attend the workshop in person). Papers will be refereed by the Programme Committee.

Programme Committee

• Simon King, University of Edinburgh, UK
• Alan Black, Carnegie Mellon Univerisity, USA
• Keiichi Tokuda, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan

Paper submission instructions

• Use the Interspeech 2012 authors' kit, but your paper should be up to SIX pages in length
• Remember that Blizzard is a scientific investigation - we are all trying to understand why some techniques work better than others.
• With this in mind, please write a detailed, technical paper aimed at a specialist audience. Focus on analysis and evaluation. Try to explain WHY your system performed the way it did, and what makes it different from other systems. Explain why your system is designed in a particular way. For example, report internal evaluations you have done to select certain methods.
• Submit your paper by email to blizzard@festvox.org by the 3rd August 2012 and we will notify you of acceptance by 10th August 2012. If you need an earlier notification (e.g., in order to obtain travel permission from your employer), then please contact us.

Location and date

Date: Friday 14th September 2012 (all day)

Venue:

Salon Ballroom

Hilton Portland & Executive Tower

Portland, OR, USA

Programme

The workshop format is single-track with oral presentations from the participants in the Challenge, the organisers and invited speakers.

Each system presentation should last for a maximum of 15 minutes, plus a few minutes for questions. Presenters should bear in mind that the audience will mainly comprise speech synthesis experts; therefore presentations do not need to include extensive background material.

We will start at 9am and run until around 5pm. The programme is as follows:

• 08.30 Registration desk opens (coffee should be available)
• 09.00-10.00 Welcome, introduction, summary
  • Welcome from the organisers
  • Message from Toshiba
  • Message from Google
  • Summary of the results
• 10.00-11.00 System presentations
  • DFKI
  • ILSP
  • NTUT
• 11.00-11.30 Coffee break
• 11.30-12.30 System presentations
  • NITECH
  • Lessac A
  • Lessac B
• 12.30-14.00 Lunch (catering provided on site, no charge)
• 14.00-15.00 System presentations
  • HELSINKI
  • I2R
  • USTC
• 15.00-15.45 Coffee break
• 15.45-16.15 Evaluation - Christoph Norrenbrock et al: Towards Perceptual Quality Modeling of Synthesized Audiobooks – Blizzard Challenge 2012
• 16.15-onwards Blizzard 2013 discussion
• ~17.00 Close
• ~17.30 An informal social gathering after the workshop for drinks, sponsored by Google. Location is Ringlers Pub (1332 W. Burnside, Portland, OR 97209)

Practical information

Registration

Registration procedure

Please mail blizzard@festvox.org to register. In your email, please use this EXACT WORDING in the subject line "Registration for the Blizzard Challenge Workshop 2012". Any other wording could lead to a delayed response. Please send one email per person registering and tell us which organisation (if any) you belong to.

All registrations will be acknowledged. Places for the sponsors and participating teams have already been allocated. Space is limited and so all remaining places will now be allocated on a 'first come, first served' basis.

• If you are the presenter of a paper, or another member of a participating team, please mention that in your registration email
• If you represent one of the sponsors, please mention that too

Cost

There is no cost to attend the Blizzard Workshop this year, thanks to support from Google and ISCA.

Accommodation and travel

Same as Interspeech 2012.

Published proceedings

The papers will be published on festvox.org