EACL Report, June 2004

Claire Gardent, Chair
John Carroll, Secretary

1. EACL 2003 Conference Accounts
---------------------------

The EACL 2003 conference accounts have been closed. The overall
balance is a small deficit (-2 174 Euros) which the local organisers
offered not to claim. A closer look at the budget shows that the
tutorials were in the red (-2470 Euros) and the workshops slightly in the
green (+1355 Euros). The sponsoring level was low (10 000 Euros from
the hungarian government).

2. Sponsorship Policy
---------------------

Each year the EACL Board receives a number of requests for sponsorship.
Until this year, these requests were dealt with on an ad-hoc basis. The
Board has now drawn up a policy for awarding sponsorships. A shortened
version of the policy document is below. The full version is on the EACL
web site http://www.eacl.org/ .

   Scale

   Each year, the EACL may make available a limited number of
   sponsorships each worth a relatively small amount of money.
   Sponsorships are awarded only if the EACL budget allows it.

   As an indication, in 2003, the EACL awarded three sponsorships, of
   approximately 750 Euros each.

   Focus

   In awarding sponsorships, EACL focuses on education in computational
   linguistics in the geographical area of the EACL. Priority is given to
   students from Eastern Europe and more generally, to students from
   countries with hard currency problems (within the geographical area
   covered by EACL).

   In the past, EACL has sponsored introductory courses at European
   summer-schools (in the form of a contribution towards the presenters'
   expenses), participation at summer-schools (funding tuition fees and
   subsistence expenses for students who would otherwise not have been
   able to come) and participation at student workshops at EACL
   conferences (contribution towards student-presenters' expenses).

   Visibility

   In return for sponsorship, EACL expects some visibility (for
   instance, the sponsorship is announced in a workshop programme and
   website etc.). A request for sponsorship must include a description
   of the visibility for EACL generated by the sponsorship.

   Procedure

   A request for sponsorship should identify a concrete purpose. Indeed,
   EACL will not sponsor a school or workshop in general, but it will
   sponsor a particular course, tutorial, etc., or it will sponsor
   participation for a particular group of students etc.

   A request for sponsorship should contain the following information:
   ...

   When the sponsorship is requested in view of funding the participation
   of individuals (students, scholars, lecturers etc.) to the event, the
   selection of the sponsorship recipients will be done jointly by the
   EACL and the requesting party as follows.

   * The requesting party will make a selection and submit it for
     approval to the EACL board.

   * The selection will be provided to the EACL together with any
     information judged relevant. ...

   Requests for sponsorships should be directed by email to one of the
   EACL board members, who passes on the request to the board.

   The EACL board decides within a month on a sponsorship request.
   Sponsorships are normally requested by and awarded to conferences,
   workshops, summer schools etc. Sponsorship requests from individuals
   will not be considered.


3. Sponsorships
---------------

In 2004, EACL sponsored two students to attend ESSLLI (to be held in
Nancy, France in August) namely, Corina Forascu (MsS student CL,
Romania) and Sophia Katrenko (PhD student, Ukraine). The sponsorship
covers accommodation, lunches and a 200 euro contribution towards
travel. As the ESSLLI organisers graciously offered to waive the fees,
the cost of this sponsorship for EACL amounted to 1420 Euros.

EACL will also sponsor the Lexicom training workshop in lexicography and
lexical computing (in Copenhagen, Denmark also in August). The
organisers have already identified a student from Romania who will
receive the grant, of 800 euro.

4. EACL Newsletter
------------------

Gertjan van Noord edited the fifth issue of the newsletter, which was
emailed to ACL members in Europe on 17 May 2004. The contents were as
follows:

   Editorial
   EACL Foundation
   PASCAL Network of Excellence Challenges
   National CL/NLP Conferences: SEPLN Spain
   Conference Report: IJCNLP Hainan
   Workshop Report: EAMT-04 Malta
   EACL Sponsorship Policy
   ACL 2004: List of Accepted Papers
   Conference Calendar

The newsletter is online at http://www.eacl.org/ .


5. EACL 2006
------------

The next EACL conference will take place in April 2006. In response to
the call for bids to host the conference, one proposal was received,
from IRST, Trento, Italy.

The EACL Board agreed that this was a high quality bid, so no further
bids were solicited. IRST has now been asked to provide more detailed
budgetary information. The final bid will be discussed at a meeting of
the Board to be held at the ACL conference in July.