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by Eva-Maria Lang25 representatives from the technical READ partners met in Valencia from May 3 to 6. Prof. Joan Andreu and Prof. Enrique Vidal hosted the researchers and developers at the Polytechnical University of Valencia.[caption id="attachment_469" align="alignleft" width="283"] Group © Eva–Maria Lang[/caption]They provided a perfect working atmosphere for very fruitful discussions on open technical and research topics. The meeting was conducted in a workshop format allowing every participating partner to get answers to current open topics.[caption id="attachment_473" align="alignright" width="300"] Venue © Eva–Maria Lang[/caption]The group started in plenary session, set their agenda of the day and broke into parallel groups to find solutions on the open technical issues. Discussion topics included the development of specific features and tools in the Transkribus platform, the establishment of a competition platform and the crowdsourcing transcription platform.[caption id="attachment_474" align="alignright" width="300"] © Eva–Maria Lang[/caption]Other hot topics included the difficult task of automatic document understanding.The challenge of this working group was mainly to agree on the format to annotate entities and document structures but also how tables and forms can be easily handled by the automatic system. Further discussion groups answered questions related to specific aspects in the automated reading process, such as how to transcribe special characters, how to better support the quality of the automated transcription and how to produce training material by the human users of the platform.[caption id="attachment_470" align="alignleft" width="172"] Oldtown © Eva–Maria Lang[/caption]The meeting hosts had kindly provided for a special event and invited the group to a typical Spanish restaurant, serving tapas, traditional paella Valenciana and delicious postres. Discussions were continued until late, and some groups even managed to shift their late-afternoon meetings to the white beach and to the marvellous old part of the city.&#160;