The Association for Computational Linguistics hereby invites proposals to host the 45th Meeting of the ACL in summer 2007. The conference is to be in Europe, according to the rule of regional rotation of ACL. The meetings of ACL to date have been highly successful, with higher than expected attendance (over 650 attendees at ACL-03 in Sapporo and around 700 at ACL-04 in Barcelona). More than 10 workshops and associated conferences were held together with the main conferences in 2003 and 2004. We hope to continue widening the scope of the domain and attracting new attendees from areas such as speech, information retrieval, cognitive modeling, etc. The conference might, therefore, draw more than 700 people.
The proposal submission process is incremental. First, draft proposals are sought from prospective bidders. Based on the evaluation of the draft proposals, promising bidders will be subsequently asked to provide additional information as needed. Draft proposals should include information on:
- Location (accessibility; conference venue, e.g., hotel or university; accommodations, e.g., hotels, motels, student dorms)
- Local CL community
- Proposed dates
- Meeting space (space for plenary sessions, tutorials, workshops, posters, exhibits, demos and small meetings)
- A/V equipment
- Food, entertainment, banquet, receptions
- Local arrangements team (chair/co-chair, committee, volunteer labor, and staffing)
- Sponsorships
- Budget estimates
- Opportunities for co-location with other meetings (if any)
The Local Arrangements Chair will be responsible for matters such as arranging meeting rooms, equipment, refreshments, housing, on-site registration, participant e-mail access, security for equipment, the reception, and the banquet; and working with the General Chair and conference advisory board to develop the budget and registration materials.
The Local Arrangements Chair will work with the General Chair and the Program Co-chairs, who will be selected by the conference advisory board. The General Chair will be responsible for overseeing operations of the conference, including working with the board and the Local Arrangements Chair to develop the budget and registration materials; working with the Program and Local Arrangements Chairs to develop the schedule and program; working with the board to appoint Committee Co-Chairs to obtain outside funding, publicize the conference, and organize workshops, tutorials, student events, and demonstrations; and coordinating the activities of the various chairs and their committees. The Program Committee Co-Chairs will oversee the processes of soliciting, receiving, and reviewing submissions; selecting the papers to be presented at the conference; notifying authors of acceptance or rejection; and developing the conference program.
Draft proposals are due on Friday, September 23, 2005. They will be evaluated by the conference advisory board by Friday, October 14, 2005. Promising bidders will be contacted at that time and will be asked to provide further information due to the advisory board on Friday, November 11 2005. The final bid will be chosen by the conference advisory board by Friday, December 9, 2005. Proposals will be evaluated in relation to a number of site selection criteria (unordered):
- Experience of local arrangement team
- Local CL community support
- Local government and industry support
- Accessibility and attractiveness of proposed site
- Appropriateness 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 and expected surplus
- Geographical and national balance with regard to the previous conferences
Please send draft proposals to Junichi TSUJII, the ACL Executive Board member responsible for the Call for Bids. We highly recommend electronic submissions. If there are non-electronic submissions, we ask that copies of that material be made for distribution to the conference advisory board and the ACL Board. We will provide a mailing list to distribute the materials to the appropriate Board members. We thank proposers in advance for their efforts.
Junichi TSUJII
Department of Computer Science
Graduate School of Information Science and Technology
University of Tokyo
Hongo Bunkyo-ku Tokyo, 113-8656, JAPAN
+81-3-5841-4098; fax: +81-3-5802-887
Important Dates:
- September 23, 2005 Draft proposals due.
- October 14, 2005 Conference advisory board evaluates proposals and contacts promising bidders.
- November 11, 2005 Promising bidders provide any requested information.
- December 9, 2005 Bid selected