Our next NLP Expert Meeting on March 27th, 2025, at our regular venue – ZHAW on Lagerstrasse – with an Apero to follow at Nüü. With this session, we will focus on “Secure & Responsible NLP” and will as always feature three great speakers.
The detailed agenda will be announced soon.
Join us on March 27th at 17:30 at Lagerstrasse 41/45, 8004 Zurich. The presentations will take place from 17:30 to 19:15, followed by the Apero downstairs at 19:15.
For those unable to attend in person, online participation is also available.
Please confirm your attendance by March 23rd using the following form:
The Swiss NLP Days 2025 are a series of activities in 2025 about Natural Language Processing (NLP), which will take place May 13-15, 2025 in Winterthur, Switzerland. They provide a unique opportunity for everyone interested in NLP applications to connect with experts and gain insights into the current state of NLP, and they serve as a platform for NLP professionals to present their work and exchange with potential clients and other NLP experts.
The Swiss NLP Days consist of two main events:
An NLP Expo for the interested public with more than 70 exhibitors which present current industrial and academic solutions in NLP.
A scientific conference called SwissText for researchers and NLP experts.
These two events are accompanied by an NLP Crash Course – Insightful sessions on practical applications and fundamental technologies of Natural Language Processing – throughout the year with workshops and tutorials.
The Swiss NLP Days 2025 mark the 10th anniversary of the SwissText conference, which was initiated in 2016 by NLP researchers at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW).
Led by industry and academic experts, the NLP Crash Course explores a wide range of NLP topics and aims to help participants understand how NLP can be applied in various business and organizational contexts.
Perfect preparation for the NLP Expo 2025. Biweekly. Free of charge.
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Mascha Kurpicz-Briki (Bern University of Applied Sciences)
Led by industry and academic experts, the NLP Crash Course explores a wide range of NLP topics and aims to help participants understand how NLP can be applied in various business and organizational contexts.
Perfect preparation for the NLP Expo 2025. Biweekly. Free of charge.
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Rico Sennrich (University of Zurich)
PIVOT: Political Insights & Views Over Time is a new research initiative that aims to track the evolution of political opinions and public stances over time.
In this context, we are seeking collaborators who bring diverse perspectives from both academic and industry backgrounds and are interested in participating in a half-day workshop. This event will serve as a collaborative platform to better understand the needs and expectations of all involved parties, and align our project goals with these.
What is PIVOT?
The initiative PIVOT is designed to analyze and map out the shifts in the opinions of politicians and public figures, offering insights into why and how their positions on key issues evolve over time. With the power of modern AI methodologies, most notably Large Language Models, and access to comprehensive datasets (Swissdox, Curia Vista etc.), we are equipped to track and interpret long-term opinion shifts across different domains and formats, including PDFs, speeches, and public statements.
Why This Project Matters:
Fighting Fake News: In today’s fast-paced digital world, misinformation can spread faster than facts. Political statements are often taken out of context, which can fuel fake news and disinformation. By analyzing long-term trends in political stances, PIVOT offers a more accurate, contextualized view of politicians’ opinions over time, helping both the public and media outlets verify the authenticity of statements and counteract misinformation.
Democracy at Stake?: With democracy being challenged globally, understanding political accountability is more crucial than ever. The project aims to create transparency around political shifts, allowing voters, policymakers, and industry leaders to track how politicians’ views evolve over time, beyond the typical 4-5 year election cycles.
Long-Term Political Analysis: Politicians often focus on short-term outcomes, usually up to the next election cycle. PIVOT, however, takes a broader view. By using longitudinal data analysis, we aim to uncover patterns of opinion changes over years or even decades and explore the key events or influences that drive these changes.
Public Relations & Media: For media companies or public relations teams, PIVOT’s analysis offers valuable insights into how politicians’ public stances align with or deviate from historical positions. This can be leveraged to craft informed messaging, fact-check statements, and anticipate future shifts.
Risk Management & Consulting: Political shifts often influence business strategies, regulatory frameworks,and market stability. Partnering on this project could offer data-driven insights for businesses seeking to navigate evolving political landscapes, particularly for industries like energy, finance, or healthcare.
Meet Fellow Experts
By joining PIVOT, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with leading experts in political science, data analytics, and AI. Together, we aim to generate actionable insights that can benefit not only academia but also industries that rely on understanding political risk, public sentiment, and long-term policy trends.
Next steps
To bring PIVOT to life, we will conduct the first half-day workshop that will take place on November 25th 2024 in Bern.
We aim to gather a diverse group of potential partners from academia, industry, media, and other relevant sectors to discuss the project’s concept in detail, exchange ideas, and explore how different organizations can contribute their expertise and resources. The workshop will help us refine the objectives and identify key areas of research where collaboration is essential. Additionally, it will provide an opportunity for participants to network and connect with others working in areas such as political data analysis, media fact-checking, and longitudinal political insights.
During the workshop we will also elaborate the next steps for continuing and supporting PIVOT as a long-term project.
What we need from you
If you are interested in the project and would like to take part in the mentioned workshop, please fill in and send us this feedback and contact Veton Matoshi (msv3@bfh.ch). We would like to know about your competencies and experiences relevant for the potential project.
We value every expression of interest and potential contribution to this project. To ensure a productive and focused workshop, we’ll carefully review all submissions and send official invitations to participants whose expertise and experience align closely with the project’s current needs and direction. We appreciate your understanding as we strive to create a balanced and effective collaborative environment for this initial workshop.
If you have any questions or require further information, please don’t hesitate to contact us at any time.
The next Expert Meeting will take place on October 24th. We are excited to have talks presented by the following Agenda:
15:00 Welcome and Intro
Philipp Kuntschik & Sarah Seyr, Co-Leads of the Expert Group
15:15 Featured presentation
Nicole Königstein, Chief AI Officer: GenAI Prompt to Product Showdown: How to Use LangGraph and LLMs to Support Product Research. Look forward to a hands-on session! Find Nicole’s Profile here https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-koenigstein/
16:00 Joint Workshop: How to leverage AI in your project governance and user-friendly 17:30 Closing and Apero
Join us at Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich (PHZH, Lagerstrasse 5, 8090 Zürich), close to the Zurich Main Station on October 24th at 15:00.
Use the following Google Forms link to register until October 18th:
The next expert meeting of the NLP group will be held on 1. October 2024 at the usual location – ZHAW on Lagerstrasse – followed by an Apero at Nüü. This session will focus on the topic of “Contextualization,” featuring the following speakers:
Hans Ramsl from Weights and Biases will discuss “Beyond Vibe Checks: Establishing Systematic Evaluation Frameworks for Semantic Contextualization in LLMs”.
Tobias Schimanski, PhD candidate at the University of Zurich and affiliated researcher at the University of Oxford, is going to talk about “Challenges and Pathways for Retrieval Augmented Generation” by looking into two of his recent papers.
Dietrich Trautmann, AI Engineer and Creator of Assistant Shell, will present on “Context-Driven Development: Exploring the Potential of LLMs in Software Engineering”. Dietrich will explore how leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) can revolutionize software engineering practices, focusing on context-aware development workflows, enhanced code generation, and intelligent error handling.
Join us on October 1st at 17:30 at Lagerstrasse 45, 8004 Zurich, in room ZL O6.16 (6th floor). The presentations will run from 17:30 to 19:00, followed by an Apero downstairs at 19:00.
Online participation is also possible.
Please use the following form to confirm your attendance by September 24:
SwissText is an annual conference that brings together text analytics experts from industry and academia. It is organized by the Swiss Association for Natural Language Processing (SwissNLP) in collaboration with local universities and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW).
Registration is open from the first of March. Early Bird Tickets are available until the fifth of May.
Swisstext is organised jointly by the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons (FHGR) and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) with the support of the Swiss Innovation Agency (Innosuisse) and several industrial sponsors.
General Chair: Prof. Corsin Capol (FHGR), Prof. Dr. Mark Cieliebak (ZHAW) Program Chair: Prof. Dr. habil. Albert Weichselbraun (FHGR) Scientific Track Chair: Dr. Claudiu Musat (Google) Workshop Chair: Dr. Elisabeth Maier (Karakun AG) Conference Happiness Manager: Lucas Zimmermann (FHGR) Organizational Memory: Manuela Hürlimann (ZHAW)
The next Expert Meeting of the NLP group on 9 April 2024, 17:30-19:00, will focus on “LLMs in Practice” and includes the following speakers:
Flurin Gishamer, Senior Data Scientist at Open Systems Title: “Harnessing Large Language Models for Augmenting Managed Service Operations”
Marcel Neidinger, Solution Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) Title: “Patterns and Lessons Learned from Building GenAI Applications in the Wild”
Arben Sabani, Language Technology Software Developer at SuperText Topic: “Leveraging LLMs for Complex Task Solving in Agent Systems”
It will take place at the ZHAW premises in Lagerstrasse 45, 8004 Zurich in room ZL O3.08 (3rd floor). The meeting will be followed by an apéro.
Online participation is also possible.
Please use the following form to confirm your attendance by March 31: https://forms.gle/iPk6PfFiWa58xz1j7. We will then send you a calendar invitation which also includes online participation details. (Note that the registration form also contains information on the SwissNLP General Assembly, which takes place right before the Expert Meeting, but this is only relevant to members of SwissNLP.)
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