I was very pleased to attend Interspeech again this year in Kos, Greece. Kos is a really comfy island located on the east coast of the Aegean sea, almost touching the mainland of Turkey. The conference was held between 01,09 to 05,09, due to this reason the weather is neither too hot nor too cold. Still at noon, it could be warmer if exposed long under the sun but the afternoon breeze can ease the heat.
The main conference takes place at Hippocrates hotel with the name after the famous Greek physician and philosopher. In one of the rooms, I presented my work entitled “A Framework for Phoneme-Level Pronunciation Assessment Using CTC”. Thanks to the practice of the presentation with my professor Prof. Salvi and Prof. Svendsen before coming here, I was not nervous at all. I got a lot of valuable feedback and comments during the 5 mins’ Q&A and after the entire session.
Because my presentation was on Monday morning, I was able to concentrate on other people’s work for the rest of the time. I got inspired a lot from all those great minds and prepared myself a list of literature to read after the conference, really helpful and encouraging! In addition to my two professors at NTNU, I also met Prof. Kurimo and his group from Aalto university. We all noticed that our TEFLON project and our research field, i.e., the concern on child speech, is attracting more and more attention this year. That also strengthened our determination to continuously devote yourself on this topic.
During one of the evenings when I took a walk in the Kos town, I really fall in love to this place: Kind people, delicious seafood, scenic views, historical buildings and stories etc.
Xinwei Cao
10.09.2024