interspeech-workflow

INTERSPEECH Workflow

Interspeech runs one cycle per year with an unforgiving rhythm: a winter deadline, a silent spring, a June verdict, and a Northern-autumn conference. This skill is the project-management layer; every date below is the verified 2026 (Sydney) calendar and must be swapped for the live one each cycle.

The 2026 reference clock

Where the cycle stands today (2026-07-08)

Mid-cycle, post-decision. Accepted teams: camera-ready is behind you; early-bird registration closes in one week — that is the live deadline — then presentation prep, artifact publication (interspeech-camera-ready, interspeech-artifact-evaluation), and travel/visa for Sydney. Rejected or unsubmitted teams: the 2027 cycle (São Paulo, 29 Aug – 2 Sep 2027) is the target; expect a deadline in the same late-winter region but treat the 2027 dates as unpublished until the São Paulo site posts them.

Backward plan from any Interspeech deadline

Offsets that have survived contact with real teams; anchor them to live dates:

• T−10 weeks: claims frozen; corpus/split/licensing decisions final.
• T−6 weeks: main results table filled with some number in every cell — the quality improves later, the design cannot.
• T−4 weeks: draft exists in the official paper kit (not a one-column doc — the 4-page reality only shows in the template).
• T−2 weeks: internal review by one speech scientist and one engineer, mirroring the reviewer mix; significance tests run.
• T−1 week: compression pass (interspeech-writing-style), anonymity sweep, demo page frozen.
• T: submit half a day early; CMT queues at AoE cutoffs.
• T+1 week: proofread the submitted PDF; use the update window for repairs only.

Failure patterns by phase

• Winter: discovering at T−1 that the paper is 5.5 pages — compression is a week of work, not a night (see the compression order in interspeech-writing-style).
• Spring silence: team disbands; nobody owns the rebuttal when it lands. Assign the response owner at submission time.
• June: acceptance euphoria eats the two-week camera-ready window; the registration coupling (no registered author → no proceedings entry) surfaces in August as a crisis.
• September: audio demos that only ever ran on the lab machine meet a conference-hall AV chain. Rehearse playback; carry spectrogram fallbacks.

Parallel-track decisions

• Interspeech vs ICASSP double rhythm: the sibling deadline (typically autumn for ICASSP) means a rejected February idea has a fall retry — decide in June whether reviews point to "fix and ICASSP" or "grow and Interspeech 2027".
• Challenge alignment: many Interspeech papers ride a challenge (CHiME, VoxSRC, ASVspoof…); challenge timelines are their own clocks, published by each organizer, and system-description papers have separate rules — verify per challenge.
• Journal extension: an accepted 4-pager with leftover material has a standard afterlife at TASLP / Computer Speech & Language / Speech Communication; start the extension outline while the reviews are fresh.

Standing owner map

Assign at kickoff, not at crisis:

• Paper owner — format, compression, the submitted PDF, the update-window proofread.
• Evidence owner — experiment matrix, seeds, significance, scoring scripts.
• Compliance owner — anonymity sweep (PDF + demo page + repo), license chain, policy checkboxes.
• Rebuttal watcher — has CMT credentials, watches the reported window, owns the response draft calendar.
• Logistics owner — registration before the tier cutoffs, visa timelines, AV rehearsal for the talk or poster QR codes.

One person can hold two hats; no hat may be unassigned. Every 2026 failure pattern above maps to exactly one vacant hat.

Minimal milestone ledger

[frozen]   claims / corpus / splits ........ T-10w   owner: evidence
[in-kit]   draft in official template ...... T-4w    owner: paper
[reviewed] internal science+eng pass ....... T-2w    owner: paper
[swept]    anonymity + demo page frozen .... T-1w    owner: compliance
[in]       CMT submission confirmed ........ T       owner: paper
[patched]  update-window proofread ......... T+1w    owner: paper
[watched]  rebuttal window covered ......... spring  owner: watcher
[final]    camera-ready + registration ..... June    owner: logistics

Output format

[Phase] pre-deadline / update-window / silent-spring / rebuttal /
        post-decision / conference-run-up / post-conference
[Live deadline] <date + what it gates + source URL>
[Owner map] paper / rebuttal / camera-ready+registration / artifacts / talk
[Backward plan] next three offsets with dates
[Parallel tracks] ICASSP retry? challenge clock? journal extension?
[Risk now] <single most time-critical item>

Verified anchors and the 待核实 list live in resources/official-source-map.md (checked 2026-07-08). ISCA rotates organizing committees per edition — the Sydney team's choices (tracks, rebuttal shape, attachment rules) do not bind São Paulo.