2015Q3 Reports: SIGFSM

Summary

SIGFSM [1] is actively meeting at its main conference FSMNLP, which is held biennally (last in 2015; next in 2017). Our meetings typically attract 20-40 participants and are organized as satellite workshops of major meetings or stand-alone conferences. Our premier conference FSMNLP is usually stand-alone and held at locations where the local research community is involved in developing or using finite-state techniques. We just met in Düsseldorf, Germany [2]. The next location for 2017 still needs to be determined.

We are still trying to grow SIGFSM into a more active community. All recent event proceedings (FSMNLP 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and ATANLP 2010, 2012 and MORPHFSM 2014) have been published in the ACL Anthology. We are trying to import older proceedings as well, but that remains a challenge (legal and otherwise). In the future, we will consider running FSMNLP as an ACL satellite event to make it more visible, to make it widely accessible at a lower cost, and to reduce the overhead work in organization.

Membership

In 2015, the membership count of SIGFSM is slowly growing, and now slightly above 100. We successfully managed to recruit a few new members at FSMNLP 2015 (June 22-24, 2015 in Düsseldorf, Germany) [3]. We use our meetings to actively recruit new members, and at present, approx. 200 people receive the meeting announcements.

Officers

The term of the elected officers started on January 1, 2013 and is to end at the end of 2015:

• Andreas Maletti (President)
• Thomas Hanneforth (Treasurer)
• Måns Hulden (Secretary)

Other Positions:

• Liaison Representative at ACL 2015: Nina Seemann
• Email List Resource Manager: Thomas Hanneforth
• Web Site Resource Manager: Thomas Hanneforth
• Web Content Resource Manager: Thomas Hanneforth

International Advisory Committee

The members of the International Advisory Committee (IAC) are nominated by the president and they continue to serve in this position until further notice.

• Matthieu Constant (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France) — since 2010
• Tim Fernando (Computer Science Department, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland) — since 2012
• Colin de la Higuera (Nantes University, France) — since 2010
• Lauri Karttunen (Stanford University, USA) — since 2010
• Kevin Knight (USC/Information Sciences Institute, USA) — since 2010
• András Kornai (Harvard University, USA & Budapest Institute of Technology, Hungary) — since 2010
• Marco Kuhlmann (Linköping University, Department of Computer and Information Science, Sweden) — since 2012
• Jakub Piskorski (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw) — since 2010
• Laurette Pretorius (University of South Africa, South Africa) — since 2010
• Bruce W. Watson (University of Pretoria, SA & Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands) — since 2010
• Anssi Yli-Jyrä (University of Helsinki, Finland) — since 2010
• Menno van Zaanen (Tilburg University, The Netherlands) — since 2010
• Lynette van Zijl (Stellenbosch University, SA) — since 2010
• the elected officers

Events and Publications

FSMNLP

• FSMNLP 2015 [4] was held June 22-24, 2015 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Sylvain Salvati (INRIA Bordeaux Sud-Ouest) and Andreas Maletti (University of Stuttgart) gave the keynote lectures. We have accepted 12 contributions for presentation. The proceedings will be published in the ACL Anthology at [5]. Traditionally, tutorials introduce particular research areas and this time we had 2 excellent tutorials presented by Mans Hulden and Ruben van de Vijver.

• FSMNLP 2013 [6] was held July 15-17, 2013 in St. Andrews, Scotland (UK). Alexander Clark (King's College London) and Bill Byrne (University of Cambridge) gave the keynote lectures. We have accepted 8 long and 9 short contributed papers for presentation. The proceedings were published in the ACL Anthology at [7]. Traditionally, locals introduce their research area in tutorials and we had 3 tutorials this time.

SIGFSM Business Meetings

• The last FSMNLP/SIGFSM business meeting was held on June 22, 2015 in Düsseldorf. Plans were made for future workshops, additional advisory committee members, and other minor issues. They will be implemented in the coming months.

• The next business meeting will be held at FSMNLP 2017.

Elections

• The third SIGFSM elections are due in 2015. The current officers took over on January 1, 2013 and will remain in office until the end of 2015. Elections are typically organized in autumn.

Financial Report

SIGFSM only has a nominal amount of cash received from previous workshop organizers as surplus. Generally any surplus is used towards expenses of the invited speakers of later workshops.

Previous Reports

[8] 2009 [9] 2010 [10] 2011 [11] 2012 [12] 2013 [13] 2014 [14] 2015