Final Call for Bids - ACL 2018

Final Call for Bids - 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics

The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) hereby invite proposals to host the conference in the Asia-Australasia-Oceania region in July or August 2018. 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 2018 Coordinating Committee, made up of representatives 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 expense and task list templates and additional useful links are provided at: http://aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=Bid_Guidelines. The template for local expenses is available here (updated 29 Sep 2015) :  http://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/gh/ACL-conference-bid-template-CURRENT.xlsx.

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, poster sessions, banquet and entertainment (traditionally, dancing for participants at the banquet)
  • Local sponsorships
  • Local expenses estimates spreadsheet (using template provided, link above)

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 expense projections
  • Geographical balance with regard to ACL and IJCNLP meetings in the Asia-Pacific region in the decade prior to 2018 (2008 Hyderabad, India; 2009 Singapore; 2011 Chiang Mai, Thailand; 2012 Jeju, Korea; 2013 Nagoya, Japan; 2015 Beijing, China)

Important Dates:

  • November, 2015: Final call for bids
  • January 31, 2016: Notify intention to submit proposal
  • March 15, 2016: Draft proposals due
  • Through May 1, 2016: Feedback to bidders
  • May 30, 2016: Final bids due
  • July 1, 2016: Bid selected
  • The selected location for ACL 2018 will be announced at the ACL 2016 conference (Berlin, August 7-12, 2016, 2016).

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

Joakim Nivre
Department of Linguistics and Philology
Uppsala University
PO Box 635
SE 75126 Uppsala
joakim.nivre [at] lingfil.uu.se