This is a sponsored article Besydney brings you.
Bidding and hosting international conferences involves outstanding leadership, team support and expert programs. With over 50 years of experience, Besydney’s business activities support bidding advice, professional services, funding and representative promotions to support your committee to provide world-class conference experience.
Michael Proctor, associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, recently spoke about his experience in a successful bid for the Interspec 2026 conference in Sydney in 2026, representing the Australian Association for Speech Science and Technology (ASSTA).
Why bid for global events?
Interspeech is the world’s largest and most comprehensive science and technology conference on language processing. The conference will include expert speakers, tutorials, verbal and poster conferences, challenges, exhibitions and satellite events, and attract 1,200 participants from around the world to Sydney. The introduction session highlights interdisciplinary approaches to address all aspects of phonological science and technology.
Associate Professor Proctor is the director of research in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, who leads the Phonetics Laboratory. Under the leadership of Professor Felicity Cox at Macquarie University, Associate Professor Proctor worked with Associate Professor Beana Ahmed at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Associate Professor Vidhya Sethu to prepare for bids on behalf of Asta.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gez0wjyx-vmEvery breakthrough begins with conversation. Become a leader in global conferences and be the voice that starts it all. Besydney’s global conference leaders share their voice and leadership vision to bid and host the global conference that drives change and shapes the future of academic and industry fields, and is trustworthy in every step of Besydney.Persini
“Organizing large international conferences is an important service for the scientific community,” said Associate Professor Proctor. Bringing the main motivation for the 2026 Presentation to Sydney to highlight Oceania’s rich multilingual landscape and reintroducing the energy of speaker researchers and industry to all the diversity of underresourced languages and speeches. These themes guide the development of bidding and resonate with the international speech science community.
“Australia has a long tradition of excellence in speech research, but received speech only once before in Brisbane in 2008. Since then, Australia has grown and diversified into one of the most multilingual countries in the world, with new language varieties emerging in our vibrant cities.”
Navigate bidding process
Working with Besydney, the bidding committee was able to align the goals and requirements of the meeting with local strengths and perspectives, positioning Sydney as the right choice for the next rotation of the international conference. Organizing successful bidding activities can provide a broader perspective on the research discipline and academic culture by providing access to global networks and international communities that participate in different ways.
“Organizing a large international conference is an important service to the scientific community. It provides a forum to highlight our work and is a unique opportunity for local students and researchers to interact with the international community.”
– Michael Proctor, a professor at Macquarie University
“Although I have been involved in organizing smaller scientific conferences before, this is my first team bidding for a large international conference,” said Associate Professor Proctor.
He added: “Bidding and organizing global conferences is a great opportunity to rethink how we work and learn from other perspectives and cultures. Hosting an international science conference provides a unique opportunity to highlight our work and to interact with local students and researchers with the international community in constructive services for our discipline. This is a great opportunity to further make groceries a group to achieve this goal.
Showcase local excellence
One of the main opportunities associated with hosting a global conference in Sydney is to showcase the strengths of your local research, industry and community. The Interspeech BID team hopes to demonstrate the strength of speech research in Oceania and provide a platform for local researchers to interact with the international community. The selected conference topic, Diversity and Equity – Speech Co-speaking, highlights groundbreaking work on inclusive and undersupported language and atypical speeches.
Interspeech 2026 in Sydney will provide important opportunities for Australian researchers, especially students and early career researchers, to interact with large international associations. This involvement is expected to promote more local activities in important growth areas such as machine learning and language modeling.
Interspeech 2026 will be an important milestone for assisting decoration. After the successful hosting of the International Conference on Phonetic Science (ICPHS) in Melbourne in 2019, it will be an opportunity to host a major international science conference with a more technical focus, attracting a wider range of researchers and spanning a more diverse range of speech-related disciplines.
“This will also be an important forum to showcase the work done by assistant members in Aboriginal language research and social training – two areas of particularly interesting and expertise in the Australian phonology research community,” said Associate Professor Proctor.
Looking to the future
Interspec 2026 will be held at the Sydney International Convention Centre (ICC) in October, with an estimated 1,200 international representatives.
The larger bidding team includes colleagues from all major universities in Australia and New Zealand, and is actively involved in speaking science and has received valuable insights and support from senior colleagues from the International Association for Speech Communication (ISCA). This collaborative effort ensures the development of compelling bids that address all the necessary aspects, from scientific content to logistical details.
As preparations for Interspeech 2026 continue, the Sydney 2026 team focused on ensuring that the conference includes representatives of the diversity of speech and language research. They are planning initiatives to support less studied languages and atypical speech and listening to make speech and language technologies more inclusive.
Associate Professor Proctor said: “In a time of increasing isolation and tribalism, we should embrace opportunities to bring people around the world to focus on the development of common interests and knowledge and to shift our focus to global attention and to our shared humanity.”
For more information on how to become a global conference leader, sign up here.
