Towards international standards for language resources

L a n g Tech 2002: The New Europe an Fo rum for Language Te c h n o l ogy, was held from 26t h to 27t h S eptember 2002 at the Hotel S ch we i ze r h o f in Berl i n . It can fa i rly claim to be the first eve n t o f a new type in European speech and language circl e s, due to its strong focus on the commercial playe rs and ap p l i c at i o n domains of human language tech n o l ogies as a wh o l e. As such , it has been widely ack n ow l e d ged as a success, with some 330 d e l egat e s, t wo thirds of them from ‘industry’ (70 different companies), coming from 20 countries. The event featured a lively exhibition of commercial suppliers, and a novelty ‘elevator pitch’ session with five-minute presentations from 23 young speech and language supplier companies, four of them from Eastern Europe, one from Israel, and one from Singapore.