Chatbot researchers are invited to CONVERSATIONS 2019, a full-day workshop on chatbot research. This is the third time we arrange this workshop where chatbot researchers meet to collaborate and share their experience and insights from their work. The workshop is free of charge, and a good place to actively participate in this rapidly advancing field.

- Date: November 19
- Location: University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Paper submission deadline (extended): September 10
- Workshop webpage: https://conversations2019.wordpress.com/

Participants are encouraged to submit papers presenting new empirical or theoretical work, as well as research on chatbot design, concepts, and evaluation. Relevant paper topics include, but are not limited to, the key challenges identified in the call for papers.

All papers will be peer reviewed by three members of the workshop program committee. Accepted full papers will be included in the workshop proceedings, published in the Springer LNCS series (conditionally accepted by Springer).

SUBMISSION CATEGORIES
- Full papers: Empirical studies, theoretical contributions, or presentations of design research (6-14 pages, Springer LNCS format) that advance the state-of-the-art. To be presented at the workshop and published in the workshop proceedings.
- Position papers: Author positions on open issues related to chatbot or chatbot demonstrations (3-6 pages, Springer LNCS format). To be presented at the workshop and published at the workshop webpage.

The objective of the workshop is to advance the state of the art on chatbot research, through cross-disciplinary sharing and collaboration. Join in on this opportunity to meet peers, share knowledge, and collaborate on future directions for chatbots and chatbot research.

IMPORTANT DATES
- September 10: Submission deadline (extended)
- October 10: Author notification (extended)
- October 25: Submission of revised papers
- November 19: Workshop

KEY CHALLENGES
Chatbots are conversational agents which allow the user access to information and services though natural language dialogue, through text or voice. Research on chatbots and the broader area of conversational user interfaces have advanced substantially in recent years, both in exploring the developments regarding their design and underlying technology but also in advancing our knowledge about how people use and experience chatbots. Being a rapidly evolving area of research, chatbots are maturing for application areas such as education, health and fitness, and information services. Research interest is also driven by the substantial impact that chatbots have in customer service as well as the popular uptake of virtual assistants.

Research is crucial in helping realize the potential of chatbots as a means of help and support, information and entertainment, social interaction and relationships. The CONVERSATIONS workshop contributes to this endeavour by providing a cross-disciplinary arena for knowledge exchange by researchers with an interest in chatbots.

In the first CONVERSATIONS workshop, we identified clusters of challenges that outline important directions for future research on chatbots and conversational user interfaces. In this year’s workshop we build on and extend these as follows:
(1) Democratizing chatbots. Concerns how to strengthen the availability, accessibility, effectiveness, and efficiency of access to information and services to a broad spectrum of users, including how chatbots can bridge digital divides and how to come up with inclusive chatbots designs.
(2) Chatbot user experience. How to investigate and strengthen chatbot user experience and also integrate richer forms of interactions in chatbots. How to understand and improve human-chatbot interaction design and evaluation.
(3) Context-aware chatbots. Concerns how to extend chatbots' ability to utilize and adapt to the context of use, for example in terms of dialogue history and knowledge of the user, but also utilizing data on other environment-related factors – e.g. from sensor data.
(4) Natural language capabilities. Concerns how to strengthen chatbot training and improve natural language capabilities in chatbots, and how to understand and strengthen generative approaches to chatbot dialogue.
(5) The impact of chatbots in our communication environment. How do users perceive, communicate with and evaluate chatbots as entities with whom they communicate? To what extent do chatbot features, dialogical style and content of the communication influence these perceptions?
(6) Chatbots in networks. Concerns how to understand and design for chatbots in networks of humans and intelligent agents, for example for education, teamwork, or service provision.
(7) The ethics of chatbots. Concerns the ethical implications of chatbots and strengthening our capabilities of designing and evaluating ethically sound human-chatbot interaction, including how to establish and quantify trust in chatbots, identify unethical chatbot use and mitigate misuse of chatbots.

The topics of interest that may be explored in the papers and at the workshop, include but are not limited to the following:
- Chatbot user needs, preferences, and experience
- The impact of personal, social and cultural factors on chatbot uptake and use
- Design for novel and improved chatbot user experience
- Chatbots that convey empathy, compassion, and wellbeing
- Inclusive chatbot design. Chatbots that bridge digital divides
- Humanlike chatbots
- Novel chatbot applications and services, e.g. in health, culture, education, government
- Multimodal chatbot interaction
- Infrastructure for chatbot development. Chatbot frameworks and platforms.
- Context sensitivity and adaptivity in chatbots
- Chatbot natural language capabilities
- Chatbot training. Chatbots that learn through use.
- Generative chatbots
- Networks of users and chatbots
- Bots in social media. Malicious bot detection
- Trust in chatbots. Trustworthy chatbot design
- Privacy and ethical issues in chatbot design and implementation.

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
The workshop organising committee are:
- Asbjørn Følstad, SINTEF, Norway
- Theo Araujo, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Symeon Papadopoulos, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
- Effie L.-C. Law, University of Leicester, UK
- Ole-Christoffer Granmo, University of Agder, Norway
- Ewa Luger, University of Edinburgh, UK
- Petter Bae Brandtzæg, University of Oslo and SINTEF, Norway

Workshop webpage: https://conversations2019.wordpress.com