2017Q1 Reports: AFNLP

President Report

KFW emphasized the importance of the AFNLP Strategic Meeting in 2015 Spring, where past Presidents met to lay down the strategic goals of future AFNLP. It was concluded that AFNLP would remain as a Federation where all participating representative associations/events are equal and the objective is to promote Asian NLP research globally. Three strategic goals have been agreed: (a) broaden internal/external communications; (b) Drive Asian Linguistic Resources; and (c) Education. KFW reported the achievements in these fronts:

Communications

• quarterly newsletters since 2015Q4 have been published and the next one will be 2016Q4, to be launched in Jan 2017
• liaison with international NLP associations, eg ACL, COLING, LREC, etc. AFNLP has supported several international conferences including, NLPCC2015 (Nancheng), NLPCC-IJCPOL2016 (Kunmin), COLING2016 (Japan), BigComp2016 (HK), ACL2016 (Berlin, student workshop)
• Asian Expert List offered to different conference organizers for them to invite Asian organization members and reviewers

Asian Linguistic Resource

Co-organise ARL12 Workshop in COLING2016 with LREC; co-organize workshop in ALR for OBOR with LREC, Guizhou (China/Vietnam border), Feb 2016; successfully invited LREC Conference to Japan, 2018 (and AFNLP will support their organization)

Education

AFNLP tried in vain to persuade China and other countries to organize summer/winter schools as there were too many. This direction has to be discussed again.

Election

KFW reported that his term will be finished at the end of this year. According to the by-laws he will be succeeded by the VP and remain as the Chair of the next election committee.

Although the deadline has slipped slightly, the 2016 election is in progress. LI Haizhou will be the next President (2017-2019) and other officers are still to be elected. In addition, the following three distinguished researchers have been elected as new MALs for the term 2017-2018. Naoaki Okazaki, Tohoku University, Japan Minghui Dong, Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore Lun-Wei Ku, Institute of Information Sciences, Taipei

The result of the full EXCO should be ready by end of Dec 2016. KFW will liaise with Haizhou for the transition.

IJCNLP2017

LCY reported that the organization was in good progress. A venue big enough for 500 participants have been selected. Conference Chair, nominated by the AFNLP EXCO, is Chenqing Zhong, serveral sponsored have been secured or being sought, and Flyers have been distributed in COLING2016.

CCQZ mentioned that the officers (ie various chairs) had been nearly completed. It would be finalized soon and posted on the website.

Any Other Business

• In the direction of driving Asian Linguistic Resources, KFW is liaising with a local MT organization to co-organize a workshop on ALR for the China's One Belt One Road Initiative. AFNLP will help invite speakers for Thai, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Malay languages. Key-Sun and Virach can help in this context.

• KFW reported that the AFNLP account had transferred to Singapore under the custody of COLIPS.