First French-speaking meeting around the framework Apache UIMA

http://www.uima-fr.org/

Nantes, France, 8-9 July 2009

As part of the 10th edition of the Libre Software Meeting (LSM/RMLL) under the conferences topic "Libre resources and software for scientific research"

Organized by LINA CNRS UMR 6241 - University of Nantes

News * Important dates * Objectives * Topics * Schedule * Accepted papers and special talks * Attendance list * Submission format * Inscription * Organisation * Practical information

News

• 090717 we are glad to inform you that the camera-ready versions of the conference articles as well as the talk slides are now available on the LSM web site:
   http://2009.rmll.info/spip.php?page=rmll_progall&lang=en&t=42
  The tutorial slides and the invited talk slides are also included.

• 090702 Practical information updates : talks, tutorial, round table and lunch

• 090618 The LSM/RMLL will take place at the Chantrerie site in Polytech Nantes, which is a part of the Nantes University. As a consequence the UIMA@LSM will take place in the same location.

• 090616 A tentative of schedule is now available

• 090609 Workshop dates: 8-9 July 2009 Due to the fact we have received more attention than we were expecting, we have decided to schedule the meeting during 2 full days: the first one will be devoted to tutorials and demonstrations, the second one to the conferences and the round table.

• 090608 List of accepted papers and of expected attendees available on the website

Important dates

• May 15, 2009: Paper Submission Deadline, Extended to May 29th

• May 20, 2009: Acceptance Notification Extended to June 3rd

• End of June: Final version expected

• For late registration please contact us directly

• July 8^th, 2009: Tutorial and demonstrations

• Juy 9^{th ,} 2009: Conferences and round table

Objectives

The complex nature of NLP applications -and language itself- involves mixing different models, resources and algorithms in the same process, leading to interoperability and data exchange issues.

The Apache UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture) framework offers appealing solutions to these problems. Apache UIMA is an open, industrial-strength, scaleable and extensible platform for creating, integrating and deploying un-(/semi-)structured information (text, audio, video...) management applications which help to build the bridge from unstructured information to structured knowledge. Apache UIMA dissociates the engineering middleware problems from NLP issues, its principles (semantic search and content analytics) are undergoing a standardization effort at OASIS, its international community is very active, and its Apache license fits research objectives and allows collaboration with industrial partners.

From 7 to 11 July 2009, the 10th edition of the LSM/RMLL (Libre Software Meeting) will take place in Nantes, France. The LSM is an opportunity for all sort of public (experts, beginners, professionals or just curious people) to come together around the free software. It is an event managed by Free, Libre and Open Source Software users'associations from the whole country.

We would like to use this opportunity to organize a special meeting around Apache UIMA to encourage the development of a user and developer French-speaking community (http://www.uima-fr.org). We plan to organize a one day meeting with both conferences and a tutorial session. This meeting will be organized under the topic "Libre resources and software for scientific research" of the RMLL conferences.

Topics

• Any Domain Type Systems Definition

• Multilingual, multidocument or multi-modal analysis component development

• Third-part tools integration

• Natural Language and Speech Processing applications development

• Distributed Worflow deployment and web services deployment

• User-sensitive UIMA tools development (Graphical CAS/Worflow editor...)

• Using UIMA as an environment for teaching NLP

We particularly wish to push forward contributions which involve French Language processing.

Tentative schedule

Apart from the UIMA meeting, some LSM/RMLL plenary conferences on "Free software in Science" (and in particular in Computational Linguistic) will be held on Friday 10^th.

List of accepted papers and special talks

• Pr. Udo Hahn - Head of Julie Lab.

  Invited Speaker "Engineering with Style: UIMA for Human Language Technology"

  With the advent of the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA), originally started at IBM, now an Apache Incubator project, the business model for building Human Language Technology (HLT) systems is beginning to change. Pieces of HLT software scattered around the world in various lab sites and resource repositories become accessible under well-defined conditions of usage and allow reuse of HLT software on a larger scale. This novel breed of HLT infrastructure is strongly grounded in data abstraction as achieved by type systems which cover all aspects of a comprehensive HLT pipeline. Our own experience with setting up a common type system as well as recent trends in this area will be the focus of my talk.

• LINA / University of Nantes

  Tutorial « Developing with the Apache UIMA framework »

• Graham Wilcock - Department of General Linguistics University of Helsinki

  Tutorial « Text Annotation with OpenNLP and UIMA  »

• Richard Eckart de Castilho and Iryna Gurevych - Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing Lab Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany

  « DKPro-UGD: A Flexible Data-Cleansing Approach to Processing User-Generated Discourse »

• Gaël de Chalendar – CEA

  « UIMA and WebContent: Complementary Frameworks for Building Semantic Web Applications »

• Baptiste Gaillard, Sylvie Guillemin-Lanne, Guillaume Jacquet, Claude Martineau, Aurélie Migeotte – Thales Communication, Temis, XRCE, IGM-LabInfo, Arisem

  « Combining NER Systems via a UIMA-based platform  »

• Frédéric Meunier, Philippe Laval, Gaëlle Recourcé and Sylvain Surcin – KWAGA

  « Kwaga : une chaîne UIMA d'analyse de contenu des mails  »

• Francois-Regis Chaumartin, Etienne Coumont, Fabio Mancinelli, and Olivier Grisel - Nuxeo, Proxem, Xwiki

  « Bridging Mono/.NET and Java in the SCRIBO Project: The Way to UIMA.NET »

Attendance list

Expected attendees - by last name followed by institution.

• Stergos Afantenos LINA

• Ramadan Alfared LINA

• Laurent Audibert LIPN

• Denis Béchet LINA

• Robert Bossy Jouy INRA

• Sébastien Campion IRISA

• Bernard Camu R&D Performics

• François-Régis Chaumartin Proxem

• Béatrice Daille LINA

• Gael De Chalendar CEA

• Benjamin de la Porte des Vaux GreenIvory

• Estelle Delpech Lingua-et-Machina

• Richard Eckart UKP Lab.

• Thomas Francart Mondeca

• Baptiste Gaillard Thales Communications

• Claire Guiraud R&D Performics

• Udo Hahn Julie Labs

• Nicolas Hernandez LINA

• Martine Hurault-Plantet LIMSI

• Guillaume Jacquet Xerox

• Christine Jacquin LINA

• Fabio Mancinelli xwiki

• Frédéric Meunier Kwaga

• Nourredine Mokhtari Sophia INRIA

• Laura Monceaux LINA

• Patrick Paroubek LIMSI

• Emmanuel Planas Lingua-et-Machina

• Jérôme Rocheteau LINA

• Arnaud Rosier INSERM U936

• David Roussel EADS France

• Sylvain Surcin kwaga

• Annie Tartier LINA

• Matthieu Vernier LINA

• Graham Wilcock Univ. Helsinki

• Haïfa Zargayouna LIPN

• Pierre Zweigenbaum LIMSI

Registration

Thanks to address your intention of participation by mail to lsm2009@uima-fr.org with "LSM UIMA Participation" in the subject. Please specify the name and the affiliation of all participants.

This declaration stands for the registration. We will care for you about the registration to the LSM Conferences. There is no registration fee for the meeting or the LSM conferences.

Practical information

Talks

• English is the expected language for the lectures though (if nobody objects in the audience) some talks might be in French with at least the slides in English.

• Each conference will take 20 minutes of talk + 10 minutes of questions. Authors who wish to make a demonstration will take some time on their conference time.

Tutorial and the use of your personal laptops

Concerning the tutorial, we will already have prepared for you several machines which will have JAVA, UIMA and Eclipse already installed, so that we will be able to start as smoothly as possible. Of course, in case that you prefer to work on your personal laptops, please feel free to do so. In such a case though, please install the latest stable version of UIMA (2.2.2) and Eclipse (3.3 and higher) (along with the UIMA Eclipse plugins). The URLS for the above are the following:

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/technology/epp/downloads/release/galileo/R/eclipse-java-galileo-linux-gtk.tar.gz

http://incubator.apache.org/uima/downloads.cgi#Latest%20Official%20Releases

http://incubator.apache.org/uima/downloads/releaseDocs/2.2.2-incubating/docs/html/overview_and_setup/overview_and_setup.html#ugr.ovv.eclipse_setup

JAVA (version >= 1.5) should also be installed in your machine.

Round table

At the end of the workshop we will have a round table. As the organizers of this workshop, we have already set a list of several subjects that we judge as interesting for launching a lively conversation. Nonetheless, it is entirely possible that what we judge as "very interesting" will probably be biased by our own research and development interests. For this reason we would like to ask you beforehand to send as a small email containing one or more subjects that you would like us to discuss during the round table. You can send

that email to the following address with the keywords "round table topics": lsm2009@uima-fr.org

Lunch

• To get student restaurant tickets, please register and pay online on the following web site https://reservation.rmll.info. In the free field of the form specify « UIMA@LSM ». As an alternative you will be able to find in and/or around the building in which LSM takes place several solutions for quick food (sandwiches, french fries, soft beverages, etc).

Booking a hotel room

The exact location of the event will be announced very soon. LSM/RMLL's organizers have encountered some problems and we have decided to wait as long as needed before announcing the final location. Whatever that will be, we would recommend you to book a hotel room in the city center ("centre ville").

• Some suggestions the Duquesne Hôtel , Pommeraye Hotel or La Pérouse Hôtel

• Or online through Nantes tourism web site

How to come to Nantes?

• By Train, by car or by plane

Accessing La Chantrerie Site

The LSM/RMLL will take place at the Chantrerie site in Polytech Nantes, which is a part of the Nantes University. As a consequence the UIMA@LSM will take place in the same location.

• Signposts will be installed for easier routing of our visitors.

• Polytech’Nantes

  Site La Chantrerie

  rue Christian Pauc BP 50609 44306 Nantes Cedex3 France

• The map of the location, and maps of Nantes public transportation system

• Coming from the center of the town there are two ways to get the LSM location by using the public transportation system. One consists in taking the tram « line 1 » then the « bus 76 », the other the tram « line 2 » then the « bus 72 ». Trams « Line 1 » and « line 2 » cross eachother at the town center. And it takes about 45 minutes for both to get the LSM location.

• Either you take the tram « line 1 » to the final stop « La Beaujoire », then take the « bus 76 » to the stop « Christian Pauc ». Check on the map and with time schedule of the bus (in particular the « yellow days/jours jaunes » part of the time schedule which corresponds to a holyday period)

  • Coming from the town center with the tram line 2: A short extract of bus 72 time schedure Recteur-Schmitt-to-LSM-site-(Christian-Pauc) 7h23 754 832 910 942 1019 1051

  • Leaving the LSM location and getting the tram line 2: bus 72 LSM-site-(Christian-Pauc)-to-Recteur-Schmitt 17h18 1752 1827 1902 1937

• Take the tram « line 2 » in direction to « Orvault – Grand Val » to the stop « Recteur Schmitt », then take the « bus 72 » to the stop « Christian Pauc ». Check on the map and with time schedule of the bus (in particular the « yellow days/jours jaunes» part of the time schedule which corresponds to a holyday period)

  • (Coming from the town center with the tram line 1: bus 76 Beaujoire-to-LSM-site-(Christian-Pauc) 7h19 728 746 758 823 839 909 941 1016 1051

  • Leaving the LSM location and getting the tram line 1: bus 76 LSM-site-(Christian-Pauc)-to-Beaujoire 17h30 1742 1803 1814 1839 1848 1922

• The Nantes bus service should be reinforced for this special event.

• It takes about 45 minutes to get the conference site from the center of the town.

• See also the LSM's web site

Organisation

• Organized by LINA CNRS UMR 6241 - University of Nantes

• Contact : lsm2009 (@uima-fr.org ) (or Nicolas.Hernandez (@univ-nantes.fr) )

• Members

  • Stergos Afantenos - LINA, Nantes, France

  • Nicolas Hernandez - LINA, Nantes, France

  • Christine Jacquin - LINA, Nantes, France

  • Fabien Poulard - LINA, Nantes, France

  • Jérôme Rocheteau - LINA, Nantes, France

  • Annie Tartier - LINA, Nantes, France

  • Matthieu Vernier - LINA, Nantes, France

Submission format

Authors may submit short papers (up to 4 pages in length). The languages of proposal will be French or English. Please send your submission in PDF to lsm2009@uima-fr.org with "LSM UIMA Submission" in the subject.

Format should follow the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Sciences (LNCS) templates (For Latex follow the Sample Latex File).

In case you are interested in making a demo, please inform us as soon as possible. Computing support and special equipment needs, must be specified with detailed descriptions.

English is the expected language for the lectures though (if nobody objects in the audience) some talks might be in French with at least the slides in English.