**3rd Summer School on Multimedia Semantics**
1-5 September 2008 Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania, Crete,
Greece http://www.mesh-ip.eu/?Page=ssms08
Understanding and thereby manipulating multimedia content at the
semantic level is the only way towards realizing the full potential of
emerging digital media technologies aimed at the delivery of
compelling multimedia solutions. The integration of knowledge,
semantics and low-level multimedia processing for the purpose of
automatic semantics extraction from multimedia content is still the
subject of active research in academia and industry. The purpose of
this event is to bring the relevant academic and media professional
societies closer to the latest research and commercial developments
providing the opportunity to gain deeper insight into the related
research challenges and the ever increasing number of new
applications.

SSMS has been held on two previous occasions and 2008 will build upon
the success of these events. A notable novel aspect of this year's
programme is the objective to connect multimedia semantics researchers
with the professional media sector. To this end, two groups of
attendees will be catered for: postgraduate students and researchers
attending a 5-day programme centred around state-of-the-art
technologies and research issues; and professionals attending a 3-day
programme explaining the application of semantic technologies to their
day-to-day activities. Selected common sessions will allow interaction
between the two groups for a creative exchange of views.

The programme for students and researchers will include the following sessions:

·  Multimedia Signal Processing, Dr Noel 'O Connor 

·  Machine Learning, Pattern Recognition, Cross-modal analysis and fusion, Dr Alexander Hauptmann 

·  Semantic Web and Multimedia, Prof Steffen Staab 

·  Multimedia Ontologies for Reasoning and Analysis, Prof Ralf Moeller 

·  Multimedia Information Indexing and Retrieval, Prof Alan Smeaton 

·  Multimodal interaction, Prof Lynda Hardman 

·  Semantic Multimedia and Industry: Applications and Trends, Dr Paola Hobson 

·  Semantics in Computer Graphics, Dr Michela Spagnuolo 

·  Social Networks and Multimedia Semantics, Dr Peter Mika 

In addition to these sessions one day will be devoted to talks which will be attended jointly by students, reseachers and professionals and will refer to current trends in Media Production & Consumption. The speakers will include the following:
·  Guido Baumhauer, Director Marketing, Strategy & Distribution, Deutsche Welle, Bonn 
·  Rainer Boehme, Faculty of Computer Science, TU Dresden 

·  Meinolf Ellers, Managing Director dpa-infocom GmbH, Hamburg, Germany 
·  Paola Hobson, Motorola UK Research Lab, Basingstoke 

·  Nikos Kryvossidis, Director, Partner Solutions Organisation, Google, London, UK 
·  Andreas Neus, IBM Germany / Karlsruhe Service Research Institute, Karlsruhe University  
·  David Nordfors, Senior Research Scholar, Stanford University 

·  Willi Ruetten, Director European Journalism Centre, Maastricht 

   * **Registration is open until 15 May 2008 at:
     ****http://www.mesh-ip.eu/?Page=ssmsapp**