Blizzard Challenge 2015 Workshop
The Blizzard Challenge 2015 workshop is a satellite event of INTERSPEECH 2015
Friday 11th September 2015
The workshop will be held at Telekom Innovation Laboratories with the generous support from Google Inc., Apple Inc., and DeitY, Gov. of India.
The Blizzard Challenge 2015 workshop is a satellite event of INTERSPEECH 2015.]
Call for participation
The Blizzard Challenge 2015 Workshop is the culmination of the Blizzard Challenge 2015 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 Blizzard Challenge 2015 uses datasets from six Indian languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali and Malayalam, recorded by professional speakers in high quality studio environments.
The workshop is a satellite event of Interspeech 2015
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 and the Expert Committee.
Organisers
- Simon King, University of Edinburgh, UK
- Kishore Prahallad, IIIT Hyderabad, India
- Alan W. Black, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
- Keiichi Tokuda, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan
Expert Committee (Indian Languages)
- TBC
Paper submission instructions
- Use the Interspeech 2015 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 deadline given in the official timeline and we will notify you of acceptance within a week. 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 11th September 2015 (all day)
Venue: The Blizzard Challenge 2015 Workshop will take place at the following address:
Quality and Usability Lab
Telekom Innovation Laboratories
TU Berlin
Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7
D-10587 Berlin, Germany
Web: http://www.qu.tu-berlin.de
Programme
The workshop format is single-track with oral presentations from the participants in the Challenge, the organizers 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.
Blizzard challenge workshop 2015 follows the similar program to the previous years.
The tentative program schedule is as follows.
- 09.00 Registration opens (+ coffee)
- 10.00 - 11.00 Welcome, introduction, summary of results
- 11.00 - 12.30 System presentations
- 12.30 - 14.00 Lunch
- 14.00 - 16.00 System presentations
- 16.00 Coffee break
- 16.30 - 18.00
- 18.00
- Evening reception
Practical information
Registration procedure
Please register via Eventbrite by the end of August 2015.
Places are limited, so we reserve the right to amend registrations later, if that is necessary to guarantee places for participating teams and sponsors.
Cost
There is no cost to attend the Blizzard Workshop this year, thanks to support from Google Inc. and Apple Inc.
Accommodation and travel
Train travel from Dresden to Berlin is straightforward. No accommodation is arranged by the workshop: please make your own arrangements.
