Expressions of interest to host the 2020 EACL conference

Event Notification Type: 
Other
Contact Email: 
Contact: 
Walter Daelemans
Submission Deadline: 
Sunday, 15 October 2017

The European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL) invites expressions of interest to host the 2020 EACL conference, to be held in Europe, the Middle East or Africa (EMEA) in Spring (preferably April) 2020. The 2020 conference will be the 16th meeting of the EACL.

At this stage, we seek expressions of interest with initial information from prospective bidders. Based on an evaluation of the interest received, promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information for draft submission, followed by a complete submission and selection.

The EACL Board will appoint the general chair for the conference, the programme committee co-chairs, and all other chairs (tutorial co-chairs, workshop co-chairs, etc., in conjunction with the general chair), except for the local arrangements chair.
Expressions of interest should:

1) Identify a local arrangements chair, who will be responsible for activities such as arranging meeting rooms, equipment, refreshments, accommodation, on-site registration, participant internet access, the reception, the conference dinner, and working with the other chairs and the EACL Board to develop the budget and registration materials. A professional conference organizer (PCO) may be involved in the organization

2) Indicate whether any national/regional Computational Linguistics association would be on board of the local organization.

3) Propose a tentative date: the conference should take place during Spring 2020 (preferably April), avoiding national holidays of the EACL countries such as Western and Orthodox Easter and Jewish passover.

4) Propose location: city and conference venue. In particular, indicate whether the conference would be held at a university or convention center. Bear in mind that EACL is growing. While Gothenburg (EACL 2014) had 520 registered participants, Valencia (EACL 2017) had 680 registered participants. So please suggest a location that could host 800+ people for plenary sessions, plus at least 4 conference rooms hosting parallel sessions (200-250 people each), a large poster or exhibit room; 11 rooms on the workshops/tutorials days among which at least two host 200 people and the others 60 persons; and rooms for demos, small meetings and registration.

5) Indicate whether there would be opportunities for co-location with other meetings, e.g. regional or national Computational Linguistics events. 

For reference, successful bids for the previous EACL conferences are available at: http://eacl.coli.uni-saarland.de/contents/cfeoi_20.html, but please note that these are complete final bids, not expressions of interest.
The ACL conference handbook (including ACL Bid guidelines) and more about ACL policies can be found at:
http://www.aclweb.org/website/policies
http://aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=Conference_Handbook
http://aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=Bid_Guidelines
Please send your expression of interest by email to the EACL Chair Walter Daelemans: eacl-chair [at] aclweb.org
 
Do not hesitate to ask questions about the process and the requirements to host the EACL conference.

The EACL board particularly encourages submissions from national or regional Computational Linguistics associations.   
Important Dates:
October 15, 2017: Deadline for expressions of interest 
November 15, 2017: Feedback to pre-bidders
December 20, 2017: Deadline for draft bids
January 31, 2018: Feedback to bidders and announcement of shortlist of bidders
March 15, 2018: Deadline for final bids
April 30, 2018: Final bid chosen
April, 2020: EACL Conference.

Best,

Lucia Specia
EACL Secretary