Remote participation

Over 300 people will be in attendance at Speech Prosody 2016 in Boston, from May 31 to June 3, But many more than that, we suspect, would like to attend, or at least would like to hear a few of the talks, but for any number of reasons, are unable to be here in person. To such would-be attendees, we are pleased to announce the following range of options for remote participation in this year’s Speech Prosody:

1. Conference Live Stream!

All of the oral presentations at Speech Prosody 2016, including keynotes and special sessions, will be streamed live on our conference website. The cost of access to the live stream will be $75 for an individual, with a discounted rate of $40 for students. Remote viewers of the live stream will have the opportunity to pose questions after talks via Twitter.

Note that costs are the same for a group wanting access to the live stream! Why not purchase access for your whole department, lab, or research cluster, and throw a Speech Prosody viewing party? A special prize will be awarded to the group providing photographic evidence of the largest such viewing party during the conference. (Not to spoil the surprise, but I heard a rumor about some really flashy prosody-themed temporary tattoos…)

2. Video archive!

Perhaps you’d prefer to binge-watch the entire conference in one sitting (not recommended), or watch just the keynotes one after the other, or just watch a talk or two here and there at your leisure, without being bound by the conference schedule? We are creating a conference archive that will contain not just the four-page papers for all talks and posters, but individually linked videos of all oral presentations at the conference, as well as, in many cases, slides from the talks, and for posters, not just the posters themselves, but where authors are so inclined, short pre-recorded poster “spiels” as well.

All registered conference participants, and anyone purchasing access to the conference live stream, will automatically receive access to this archive. For access just to the archive, which will come into being progressively, during the conference, as the talks themselves unfold, the cost will be $25, with a discounted rate of $10 for students.

Registration: To register for either of the above options, just go to our registration page, and select the remote participation option that best suits your needs: registration page. You will then receive instructions via email as to how to proceed. (This notification will not be instantaneous, but will take place in a timely fashion!)

(Note that this archive is *not* the official Speech Prosody Proceedings volume, which will contain all of the four-page papers from the conference, and will be made freely available to the public online independently, by the ISCA.)

3. Robotic access to poster sessions!

Poster sessions, for obvious reasons, don’t lend themselves to live-streaming. Instead, we will be deploying two mobile telepresence robots at all poster sessions. Each robot accommodates one remote “driver”, and multiple remote “passengers”. Using a simple web interface, you will be able to maneuver your robot through the poster session (accompanied, of course, by vigilant human chaperones), choose which posters to view, interact by audio/video with presenters, even stop to chat with other attendees (human or robot).

Because we have just two robots, spaces are limited. Driving or riding on our robots will be completely free of charge, but time slots will be apportioned on a first-come, first-served basis. To sign up for robotic embodiment, please first visit our conference program to select the poster session or sessions you are most interested in attending (https://sites.bu.edu/speechprosody2016/schedule/detailed-program/), and then visit the following site to sign up for a spot: http://goo.gl/forms/Z5uOcb1cbQrGJnev1 . Once you have signed up, we will contact you with instructions for how to proceed.

Want to learn more? Check out our Remote Participation FAQ page.