The Conference on Language Processing (NLP2019) @ Nagoya University How did the pounding speech end up!

The 25th Annual Conference of the Association for Natural Language Processing (NLP2019) was held at Nagoya University from March 12 (Tuesday) to March 15 (Friday), 2019.
This year we welcomed a whopping 1,000 participants, and the venue was filled with the enthusiasm of many people!

Nagoya University is only a 20-minute subway ride from Nagoya Station, and the venue was right in front of me as soon as I walked through the ticket gate and up the stairs, which was very nice for me as I was carrying a carry-on case.

While it was still too cold and windy to feel the arrival of spring, I found spring inside the university.

Rape blossoms bloomed all over the place!

It has been several years since I left my hometown in Shikoku...
This may be the first time I have seen this many rape blossoms.

We entered the venue and started to prepare our booth.
Including domestic and foreign companies whose commercials are aired on TV, there are exhibitors from well-known sponsors such as the research division of the largest Japanese online retailer, an IT company that owns a professional baseball team, and many others.

Each company exhibited a variety of products and services related to language processing.
One such product that caught my eye was the "Matchmaking Robot!

Matchmaking Robot...
When I asked if the robots would be arranging a blind date with each other,
"Why not!"
I received an exhilarating rush of "Why not?

The robots are placed one on the male side and one on the female side during the blind date and let the robots talk to each other.
The robots are told to memorize the profiles of the blind date's age, hobbies, etc. in advance.
The robots are perfect for shy people or people who are shy.
(It is surreal to see a robot talking to a human next to it.)
By having the robots start the conversation with each other, it would make a great story during the blind date!
I think it's a great and innovative idea.

As we greeted each other with light banter, the topic turned to the Sponsor Evening, which is held in the evening.
Sponsor Evening is a benefit for sponsors that allows each company to give a 30-second speech to university and graduate school students, and each company makes full use of the short time limit to promote itself and how to recruit students with programming knowledge of the language.

The question is: "What can you convey in 30 seconds?

This seemed to be a common challenge for all the sponsors.
Our company participated in this event as a gold sponsor.

It was time for the show.
We repeat the practice in our minds until just before we go on stage.
After 30 seconds, the bell rings, and even if you are in the middle of your speech, you have to be replaced by the next company....
The companies that were able to finish their speeches within the time limit received applause from the audience (laughter).

The mood was calm and the event was progressing, and then it was time to speak!
By the way, we are the last in the order, the grand finale. Nervous!

I took a deep breath, took the stage, and looked around the venue to see an amazing number of people.

1) I have been specializing in language processing since the 1980s.
2) Kodensha's strength is that we develop our own translation engines.
3) We also create dictionaries and bilingual corpora. Please come visit us at our booth!

Alright! Six seconds left.
I was about to say "Sponsor..." when my blood suddenly drained away.
I made a mistake. I meant to say "interns.
What to do...my mind was in a panic!
Immediately, I shouted out in a very loud voice, "Ring-ring-ring!

We are also looking for interns!

The bell rang to signal the end of the session.

It seemed that we had managed to keep it within 30 seconds.
The first sponsor evening ended with applause from the audience.
Each company gave an elaborate presentation, and some exhibitors introduced their companies in three different languages!

The next day, students with both language and programming skills asked about our exhibit booth and inquired about employment opportunities!
This year, we received many inquiries about employment at our booth, and I could feel the students' enthusiasm for language processing, and at the same time, I was inspired to work harder! At the same time, I was inspired to work harder!

I am now looking forward to what kind of events await us next year.

We introduced our bilingual corpus at the exhibition and received many valuable comments and questions from people involved in research related to language processing.
We will reply to the questions we received at the exhibition in due course, so please wait a little longer.

Thank you very much for stopping by our booth.

～Editor's Postscript

On the way home, I had Nagoya's famous "Miso Nikomi Udon" (udon noodles stewed in miso broth).

The firm texture of the noodles and the mellow miso aroma of the soup!
It was delicious with white rice.

I thought that next time I would like to come back to Nagoya for sightseeing and to eat Nagoya-meshi.