Research LT Future Consultations

EU consultation on prospects and opportunities for written and spoken human language.

Dear Project Partner,

I am inviting you to take part in a consultation concerning future research and innovation activities in the area of written and spoken human language technologies (LT).

The EC services are currently drafting various elements of future programmes for ICT research and innovation. There are two important deadlines:

• the work programme covering the last round of activities under the current (FP7 ICT) programme will be finalized in Q2 2012; calls for proposals can be expected as early as July 2012;

• the overall structure of future EU actions (from 2014 on) is expected to emerge in the second half of 2012.

It goes without saying that the next year's calls will serve the purpose of preparing the ground for activities in and beyond 2014, in other words short term activities will depend heavily on longer term strategies.

Even though the scope and place of LT in future EU programmes will ultimately depend on our political masters, we need to explore the main challenges, drivers and opportunities, and develop a credible strategy by the end of this year. This strategy and the associated plan (topics, instruments, partnerships) will then be developed progressively in the course of 2012.

It is important that you participate in this process and give us your views on what could be done to better serve the needs of your community in future EU research and innovation actions.

Two questionnaires are enclosed: one is aimed at academic and research centres, the other one is designed for commercial technology developers and vendors. Please note that user organisations, sub-contractors, consultancies and the like are not our primary target.

Please take a few minutes to select the most appropriate questionnaire, fill it in, save and send it to our functional mail-box (infso-e1@ec.europa.eu) at your earliest convenience and in any case no later than 22 November 2011.

I thank you in advance for your kind attention and co-operation. Best regards,

Roberto Cencioni

Head of unit INFSO.E1 - Language Technologies & Machine Translation http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/language-technologies/business-platform_... The views expressed in this e-mail are not necessarily those of the European Commission