2009Q3 Reports: Local Arrangements Chair

Local Chair Report (Li, Haizhou)

The Local Organizing Committee has completed most of the logistics arrangement for ACL-IJCNLP 2009 by July 3. They are summarized as follows:

1) Conference venue The rooms for ACL-IJCNLP 2009 main conference, tutorials, workshops, EMNLP, exhibition, software demos, and other ACL meetings have been confirmed with A/V and power facilities. They have been published at http://www.acl-ijcnlp-2009.org/main/conferencevenue.html.

2) Banquet, reception, ACL Exec++, ACL Board meeting, CL Editorial and other functions have been confirmed and announced at http://www.acl-ijcnlp-2009.org/main/program_glance.html

3) Onsite logistics Wireless internet, A/V and projectors, poster and lecture presentation facilities have been confirmed and announced at http://www.acl-ijcnlp-2009.org/main/infoparticipants.html

4) Publicity and Printing - Handbooks and conference proceedings are printed in Singapore, to be ready by 25 July, 2009 - Onsite publicity and press conference are being arranged - Conference blog is established in May 2009

5) Registration - Student travel grants have been awarded on 20 June - Student volunteers have been awarded on 2 July - Conference bags, souvenirs, T-shirt, videographer, photographer are ready on 30 June

6) Local sponsors By 1 July, local team has secured 4 local sponsors providing in-kind contributions to the conference as follows: - minimum 50 paid registration from Singapore - sponsor the entertainment performances in welcome reception and banquet - sponsor duty-paid wine to conference banquet - souvenirs for conference participants - travel grants

7) Hotel arrangement - Participants have taken up most of rooms offered by conference hotels in a package deal, which in general is a better deal than the regular rate. - The local committee has also negotiated with the hotels to release more rooms in June. - It should be noted that hotel adjusts room rate all the time, while our conference rate is fixed. Participants are advised to compare the room rates before making reservation.

8) Website ACL-IJCNLP 2009 promises a timely publication of information on the official website. All technical programmes and venue arrangement, time table, travel information can be found at http://www.acl-ijcnlp-2009.org/index.html. The local committee also provide a conference blog for people to exchange travel and conference related information.