Call for Bids to Host ACL 2012

50TH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ACL!

The Association for Computational Linguistics invites proposals to host the 50th Annual Meeting of the ACL, to be held in the Asia-Pacific region in June, July, or August 2012.

At this time, we seek preliminary draft proposals from prospective bidders in the Asia-Pacific region. Promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information for the final selection.

The ACL 2012 Coordinating Committee, made up of members of the Executive Committee of the ACL and representatives of the Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing (AFNLP), will select the General Chair and the Program Committee Co-Chairs for the conference. Draft proposals should identify a Local Arrangements Chair, who will work with the General Chair and the Coordinating Committee to develop a detailed plan and budget.

To facilitate conference organization, bidders may delegate many tasks of their choice to a Professional Conference Organizer and/or to the ACL Office (Priscilla Rasmussen). Handy bid guidelines, including budget and task list templates and additional useful links are provided at: http://aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=Bid_Guidelines.

Bid Highlights: Draft proposals include information on the following:

  • Location (accessibility; conference venue, e.g., hotel or university; accommodation; dining options)
  • Proposed dates. Religious and local national holidays should be avoided, as much as possible.
  • Local arrangements team (chair/co-chair, committee, volunteer labor, registration handling; describing any experience the team has had in organizing previous conferences and the number of participants at those conferences)
  • Local Computational Linguistics community
  • Meeting venues (space for sessions, tutorials, workshops, posters, exhibits, demos, small meetings and registration)
  • High-speed, all-ports-open, easy-to-use internet access
  • Audiovisual equipment
  • Catering, including breaks, receptions, banquet and entertainment (traditionally, dancing for participants at the banquet)
  • Local sponsorships
  • Budget estimates spreadsheet (template provided, linked from the Bid Guidelines)

Evaluation: Proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria (unordered):

  • Experience of local arrangements team
  • Local CL community support
  • Local government and industry support
  • Accessibility and attractiveness of proposed site
  • Suitability of proposed dates
  • Adequacy of conference and exhibit facilities for the anticipated number of registrants
  • Adequacy of residence accommodations and food services in a range of price categories and close to the conference facilities
  • Adequacy of budget projections
  • Geographical balance with regard to ACL meetings in the Asia-Pacific Region in the decade prior to 2012 (Sapporo, 2003; Sydney, 2006; Singapore, 2009).

Important Dates:

December, 2009 - Final Call for Bids
February 15, 2010 - Notify intention to submit proposal
March 15, 2010 - Draft proposals due
Through May 1, 2010 - Feedback to bidders
May 28, 2010 - Final bids due
June 28, 2010 - Bid selected

The selected location for ACL 2012 will be announced at the ACL 2010 conference (Uppsala, July 11-16, 2010).

For any queries please contact Kevin Knight, the Coordinating Committee chair. Please send notifications and draft proposals to:

Kevin Knight
Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA, USA
Email: knight @ isi . edu
Phone: 1.310.448.8716
Fax: 1.310.822.0751