It is my great pleasure and relief to have accomplished the first Rencon.
The full day workshop is in a sense long but too short to discuss issues
thoroughly.
The listening time was a fun. We were impressed or surprised by performances
with no rehearsal and no tuning. Though a simple voting, the result
may reflect many things ---the degree of maturity of a system is also
implied, maybe.
I felt that in this way of evaluating systems to the public eye will become
more tough to researchers than evaluating them only by a few paper referees.
I hope the proceedings and the CD-ROM will be valuable to
the participants and those who purchased it to their research.
We, Rencon organizer, are happy to
have the active discussion at the end of the workshop. It seems to prove
that what we (and people who have attended the series of discussions
so far) have discussed and are aiming at look toward the correct direction.
Actually it was a burden for me to have the international workshop.
The completion of the first Rencon owes much to Rencon staff;
from treasury issue to research presentations. I am most grateful for them.
The second Rencon, Rencon at FIT, is coming soon and we started preparing
for it.
The third Rencon is planned to be in Acapulco as a workshop of IJCAI-03.
I hope to see participants from the Americas at Rencon from next year to
make Rencon a more promising activity.
I live in Tsukuba which is close to the lake "Kasumigaura", the second
largest lake in Japan and yields Rencon the most in Japan. We can also
find varieties of foods made from Rencon.
In winter, we can see signboards at stores saying "special product Rencon
from Ibaraki to anywhere in Japan".
"special events Rencon from Kyoto to all over the world"
Rumi Hiraga [footer.htm]