Nordic Graduate School of Language Technology

NGSLT Board Meeting

3rd October, 2007

13.30-16.30

(lunch 12.00-13.30)

Donelaicio gatve 52, room 211, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas

Present: Robin Cooper (Sweden, chair), Mare Koit (Estonia), Kimmo Koskenniemi (Finland), Stina Ojala (Finland, student representative), Anton Ragni (Estonia, student representative), Gailius Raskinis (Lithuania), Inguna Skadina (Latvia), Torbjørn Svendsen (Norway)

  1. formalia
    It was decided that Robin would prepare minutes and post them on NGSLT's website.
    The agenda was approved.
  2. information
    Robin and Kimmo informed about the status of the NGSLT review. The meeting in Oslo on 4th June went well. At the time of the current meeting NordForsk was still preparing its report.
  3. minutes of last meeting (html)
    Some outstanding actions were noted:
    Item 3.
    Updateable versions of student information is still desirable. Action Göteborg
    Item 4.
    It is not clear whether Fredrik Jørgensen still wishes to moderate a mailing list with web archive concerning questions specific to Nordic LT. He should be contacted. Action Göteborg
    Item 6.
    descriptions of existing courses on NGSLT's wiki (http://ngslt.org/wiki/view/Main/LocalCourses). Action all: add information.
  4. student issues (student representatives)
    The main issue the students had discussed at their meeting was that of the summer school. All the student area representatives are willing to help in the organization of it. Suggestions for topics that have come so far are: computational phonology, ontologies and learning (in general). One possibility would be to have one track during the first week of the school and another track the second week. These issues were discussed further under item 6.
  5. budget information
    Robin presented a summary of our use of funds up to 30/9/07 (pdf). We still have a positive balance left over from our start up year which is increasing from year to year.
  6. summer school
    The following action plan was decided on:
    by 17th Oct
    9th-19th June was suggested as a date. Action Robin and Kimmo: check for conflicts and circulate information.
    structure - Action Robin: produce a document
    theme(s) - Action students: feedback
    after 17th Oct
    call for host
    end Oct
    decision on host
    early Nov
    call for course proposals
    end Nov
    deadline for course proposals
    15th Dec
    decision about courses
    registration
    15th Jan -15th Feb
  7. course information and planning
    Information was given concerning enrolment and attendance at courses currently running: Speech Technology, Machine Learning, Computational Semantics, Grammatical Framework (all at GSLT). Two further courses are planned for the autumn: Statistical MT 12th-16th Nov., University of Tartu, Estonia, Lexical Semantics, 26th-30th Nov., University of Latvia, Riga.
    It was confirmed during the meeting that Computational Phonology will be given at Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania in the spring. Action Robin: contact Eirikur concerning the possibility of a course being held in Iceland in the spring.
  8. secondary supervision/lab visits
    A draft web form for students to apply for contact with supervisors and lab visits was discussed and some changes were suggested. Action Göteborg: make changes and announce the existence of the form when it has been posted.
  9. descriptions of language technology research and teaching (NEALT)
    It was decided that NGSLT should continue to maintain these descriptions until NEALT has country representatives.
  10. NEALT report
    Kimmo gave a report on NEALT. The organization is now almost a year old. It has taken responsibility for organizing Nodalida which will be in Odense, Denmark in 2009 and in Riga 2011. There are two NEALT SIGS: teaching (of which Kimmo is the chair) and infrastructure (chaired by Rickard Domeij). Mare, editor in chief for NEALT, gave a report on publications. Uppsala, Tartu and Linköping universities are under consideration for providing electronic publication facilities for NEALT's workshop proceedings and journal.
  11. date of next meeting
    16th April 2008 was suggested as a preliminary possibility. Action: discuss this by email
  12. any other business
    No other business.
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