META-VISION

META Vision

One of the main objectives of META-NET is to produce a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for Europe's Language Technology landscape. The agenda will contain high level recommendations, ideas for visionary LT-based applications and suggestions for joint actions to be presented to the EC and national as well as regional bodies.

Apart from the public at large which can participate in the whole process via an online discussion forum, a total of four groups are involved in this vision building process within the initiative. The main task of our three domain-specific Vision Groups (Translation and Localisation, Media and Information Services, Interactive Systems, see below) is to produce ideas and concepts for visionary LT-based applications within their respective domains and to provide input for technology forecasts.

The fourth group involved in the vision building process is the META Technology Council. The reports on the accumulated and condensed findings produced by the Vision Groups are currently under discussion in and processed by the META Technology Council which had its inaugural meeting on November 16, 2010, in Brussels. The Council will consolidate them into a first draft of the Strategic Research Agenda. This SRA will reflect the opinions and needs of all stakeholders who have been involved in the vision building process and will contain, among others, cross-cutting strategies.

The vision group reports, the SRA and other results of the vision building process will be used to convey META’s message to policy makers, private and public sponsors and the general public.

The META-VISION Process

It is important to stress that anybody is welcome to join the vision building process via our online discussion forum, by getting in touch with us via email or by approaching us at conferences.

Update, March 23, 2011: An important intermediate result of the META-VISION process is the document The Future European Multilingual Information Society (PDF). You're invited to read and to circulate the document and to discuss it and to provide further feedback and ideas in our online discussion forum.

Members and Participants

Vision Group Translation and Localisation

Fields: Technical documentation, consumer information, official bulletins, user interface localisation, games, services, etc.
Stakeholders: Software companies, game companies, large users of translation services, translation companies, localisation industry, etc.
Meetings: Berlin, Germany, July 23rd, 2010; Brussels, Belgium, September 29th, 2010; Prague, Czech Republic, April 7 / 8, 2011
Conveners: Hans Uszkoreit (DFKI, Germany) and Josef van Genabith (DCU/CNGL, Ireland)
Members: Members of this Vision Group
Presentations: Presentation given by Jörg Porsiel (META-FORUM 2010)
Presentation given by Josef van Genabith (META Technology Council meeting)
Report: Results of the first two meetings (draft)

Vision Group Media and Information Services

Fields: Audiovisual sector, news, digital libraries, portals, search engines, etc.
Stakeholders: Media industries, web and search engine providers, archives, etc.
Meetings: Paris, France, September 10, 2010; Barcelona, Spain, October 15th, 2010; Vienna, Austria, April 1, 2011
Conveners: Stelios Piperidis (ILSP, Greece) and Margaretha Mazura (EMF, Belgium/UK)
Members: Members of this Vision Group
Presentations: Presentation given by Philippe Wacker (META-FORUM 2010)
Presentation given by Stelios Piperidis (META Technology Council meeting)
Report: Results of the first two meetings (draft)

Vision Group Interactive Systems

Fields: Mobile assistance, dialogue translation, call centres, etc.
Stakeholders: Mobile software and service providers, telecom industry, call centres, games industries, etc.
Meetings: Paris, France, September 10, 2010; Prague, Czech Republic, October 5th, 2010; Rotterdam, Netherlands, March 28, 2011
Conveners: Joseph Mariani (LIMSI/CNRS, France) and Bernardo Magnini (FBK, Italy)
Members: Members of this Vision Group
Presentations: Presentation given by Alex Waibel (META-FORUM 2010)
Presentation given by Joseph Mariani (META Technology Council meeting)
Report: Results of the first two meetings (draft)

Presentation of Results

Results of the first round of Vision Group meetings have been presented at META-NET's Networking Session at ICT 2010 on September 28, 2010. Results of the second round of Vision Group meetings have been presented at META-FORUM 2010 in Brussels (November 17th/18th, 2010). The most recent intermediate result of the META-VISION process is the document The Future European Multilingual Information Society (PDF). Further results will be presented at META-FORUM 2011 in Budapest (June 27/28, 2011).

Your opinion counts! – Your feedback is needed!

In the discussion forum you can discuss your visions for the field of Language Technology and also comment on and discuss the ideas and visions from the Vision Groups introduced above.

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