Blizzard Challenge 2011

Data for the Blizzard Challenge 2011 was generously provided by Lessac Technologies http://www.lessactech.com/

Google UK has generously provided financial support to the Blizzard Challenge 2011

This Blizzard Challenge has finished

• Please do not try to register for this challenge - you are too late!
• However, the data are still available. Do not email us, but simply go to https://synsig.org/index.php/Blizzard_Challenge#Tools_and_data
• The remainder of this page is left as a record of the Challenge

Read these first

• Download the Call for Participation for the Blizzard Challenge 2011 in PDF format.

• Read and agree to the Blizzard Challenge 2011 Rules before participating.

Data download and license agreements

1. Register: by emailing blizzard@festvox.org. We need to know your team name, the name of the main contact person, your affiliation, and contact details including email address, postal address and phone number.
2. License: complete the license agreements for the data, which can all be accessed via http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/blizzard/
3. Download: You will be sent a username and password to download the data. These are the same for all downloads, and will only be activated after you have returned the license agreement. Download links can be found on the above page.

• Development tools, available via : http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/blizzard/, include:
  • Submitted synthetic speech and listener scores for some previous Blizzard Challenges, which may be helpful during development

• Test sentences:
  • Download them from http://data.cstr.ed.ac.uk/blizzard2011/lessac/blizzard_2011_test_sentences.zip

• Questionnaire:
  • Download the questionnaire, complete it, and return it by the deadline given in the Timeline. http://data.cstr.ed.ac.uk/blizzard2011/system_questionnaire.txt

Mailing list

There is a mailing list for discussion and announcements for the challenge:

 blizzard-discuss@festvox.org

Participants must join the list by sending a message to majordomo@festvox.org with the following line in the body of the message

 subscribe blizzard-discuss

Once you a member you will be able to mail messages to blizzard-discuss@festvox.org

Timeline

The timeline shown on this web page is the offical one and supercedes those shown in announcements - it is subject to change, but we will try to follow it as closely as possible. Note that we will not consider any requests from participants to change the synthetic speech submission date or the paper submission date!

  Mar  4 2011 Databases released
  Apr 15 2011 Test sentences released
  Apr 22 2011 Deadline for submitting synthesized speech 
  Apr 29 2011 Evaluation system goes live
  Jun 25 2011 End of Evaluation
  Jul 12 2011 Deadline for returning the participant questionnaire
  Jul 12 2011 Results distributed to teams who have returned their questionnaire
  Jul 31 2011 Satellite workshop papers due
  Aug 5 2011 Notification of acceptance 
  Aug 28-31 2011 Interspeech 2011, Florence, Italy
  Sep  2 2011 Presentation of results at the satellite workshop, in Turin, Italy

Workshop

Information on the workshop can be found here: Blizzard Challenge 2011 Workshop

Any questions?

• Please contact blizzard@festvox.org if you have any questions

Previous challenges

• Blizzard Challenge 2010
• Blizzard Challenge 2009
• Blizzard Challenge 2008
• Blizzard Challenge 2007
• Blizzard Challenge 2006 papers and results: http://www.festvox.org/blizzard/blizzard2006.html
• Blizzard Challenge 2005 papers and results: http://www.festvox.org/blizzard/blizzard2005.html

Concurrent challenges

• Blizzard Challenge 2012