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Towards the Primary Platform for
Language Technologies in Europe

META-FORUM 2022: Programme

The fourth annual ELG conference

META-FORUM 2022

Joining the European Language Grid:

Together Towards Digital Language Equality

Brussels, Belgium

Atomium Brussels
© Adobe Stock – Sergij Figurnyi

Programme



8 June 2022 – META-FORUM 2022

8:30 Doors Open – Registration
Session 1: Opening – European Language Grid
9:00 Welcome – Georg Rehm (DFKI, Germany; Coordinator ELG and General Secretary of META-NET)
9:10 Introduction – Jan Hajič (Charles University, Czech Republic; Chair of the META-NET Executive Board)
9:15 Invited Keynote: “AI sovereignty: Alignment & fairness for a new generation of multimodal models”
– Jonas Andrulis (Aleph Alpha, Germany)
9:45 ELG: General Overview – Georg Rehm (DFKI, Germany)
10:00 ELG: Technology Platform – Stelios Piperidis (ILSP, R.C. “Athena”, Greece)
10:15 ELG: Tools, Services and Resources – Kalina Bontcheva (University of Sheffield, UK)
10:30 Coffee Break
Session 2: ELG Platform
11:00 Final Release of the ELG Platform:
Functional Overview, Demo and Tutorial		 Speakers:

  • Penny Labropoulou (ILSP, R.C. “Athena”, Greece)
  • Ian Roberts (University of Sheffield, UK)
  • Rémi Calizzano (DFKI, Germany)
    Session 3: Selected ELG Tools, Services and Resources – Ian Roberts (University of Sheffield, UK)
    11:45 Best of ELG: Showcases, Use Cases and Best Practices – Ian Roberts (University of Sheffield, UK)
    NTEU – Manuel Herranz (Pangeanic, Spain)
    OPUS-MT – Tommi Nieminen, Jörg Tiedemann (University of Helsinki, Finland)
    Elhuyar (tbc)
    Bangor University – Gareth Watkins (Bangor University, UK)
    Multilingual Image Corpus – Svetla Koeva (Bulgarian Academy of Science, Bulgaria)
    Microservices at your service (tbc)
    12:30 Lunch Break + Video Expo
    Session 4: Language-centric AI Panel – Jan Hajič (Charles University, Czech Republic)
    13:30 Panel with Representatives of the main Initiatives in the European Language-centric AI Community
    OpenGPT-X and Gaia-X – Joachim Köhler (Fraunhofer IAIS, Germany)
    HumanE-AI-Net – James Crowley (Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble, France)
    CLAIRE – Philipp Slusallek (CLAIRE, Netherlands)
    CLARIN – Darja Fišer (CLARIN, Netherlands)
    EFNIL – Sabine Kirchmeier (EFNIL, Luxembourg)
    15:00 Coffee Break
    Session 5: Industry Session – Gerhard Backfried (HENSOLDT Analytics GmbH, Austria)
    15:30 Panel with Representatives from European LT Industry
    Identrics – Yolina Petrova (Identrics, Bulgaria)
    Phonexia – Petr Schwarz (Phonexia, Czechia)
    Gavagai – Fredrik Olsson (Gavagai, Sweden)
    Session 6: The Future of ELG – Georg Rehm (DFKI, Germany)
    16:15
    • Language Data Space – Philippe Gelin (European Commission, DG CONNECT, Luxembourg)
    • Legal Entity and Products – Georg Rehm (DFKI, Germany)
    • Discussion
    Closing Session
    16:45 ELG Book Preview and Closing Remarks – Georg Rehm (DFKI, Germany)
    17:00 Reception
    18:00 End of Day 1

    09 June 2022 – META-FORUM 2022

    Session 7: Opening – European Language Equality
    9:00 Opening – Georg Rehm (DFKI, Germany; Co-coordinator ELE)
    9:10 Invited Keynotes
    Invited Keynote – June Lowery-Kingston (European Commission, Head of Unit “Accessibility, Multilingualism & Safer Internet”)
    Invited Keynote – François Alfonsi (Member of the European Parliament)
    9:40 National LT/AI Strategies in Europe – Is Language Represented? – German Rigau (University of the Basque Country, Spain)
    9:55 Defining Digital Language Equality – Federico Gaspari (Dublin City University, Ireland)
    10:15 Digital Language Equality Dashboard – Stelios Piperidis (ILSP, R.C. “Athena”, Greece)
    10:30 Coffee Break
    Session 8: Technology Support of Europe’s Language in 2022
    11:00 Language Technology for Europe’s Languages in 2022 – Cross-language Comparison – Maria Giagkou (ILSP, R.C. “Athena”, Greece)
    11:15 Results of Selected Language Reports
    Irish – Teresa Lynn (Dublin City University, Ireland)
    Dutch – Frieda Steurs (Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, Netherlands)
    Bulgarian – Svetla Koeva (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria)
    Welsh – Gareth Watkins (Bangor University, UK)
    Icelandic – Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson (Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, Iceland)
    11:45 Discussion
    12:00 Lunch Break + Video Expo
    Session 9: Demands, Needs and Gaps of the European LT Community
    13:00 European LT Developers – Maria Giagkou (ILSP, R.C. “Athena”, Greece)
    CLARIN – Maria Eskevich (CLARIN, Netherlands)
    CLAIRE – Marlies Thönnissen (CLAIRE, Netherlands)
    13:15 European LT Users & European Citizens – Natalia Resende (Dublin City University, Ireland)
    13:30 Deep Dives – Teresa Lynn (Dublin City University, Ireland)
    Machine Translation – Andrejs Vasiljevs (Tilde, Latvia)
    Speech Technologies – Gerhard Backfried (Hensoldt, Austria)
    Text Analytics – Andrés Garcia Silva (Expert System, Spain)
    Data and Knowledge – Martin Kaltenböck (Semantic Web Company, Austria)
    Session 10: LT Vision for 2030
    14:00 Our Vision for 2030: Digital Language Equality – Jan Hajič (Charles University, Czech Republic)
    14:20 Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda – Georg Rehm (DFKI, Germany)
    14:45 Discussion
    15:00 Coffee Break
    Session 11: Continuation of ELE
    15:15 Next steps: New funding opportunities, Sneak Peak: ELE book Speakers:

    • Georg Rehm (DFKI, Germany)
    • Jane Dunne (Dublin City University, Ireland)
    • Jan Hajič (Charles University, Czech Republic)
    Closing Session
    15:45 Recap and Closing Remarks – Georg Rehm (DFKI, Germany)
    16:00 End of Day 2