Report on HLT-02

Kathleen F. McCoy


This year HLT-02 was sponsored by ACL. This means that ACL provides
the financial backing for the conference, and keeps the profits or
losses that the conference generates. This was an unusual
sponsorship, and was undertaken primarily as a gesture of good will
towards HLT (which will be holding its 2003 conference jointly with
NAACL).

Usually when ACL sponsors a conference we require ACL membership of
all members attending. For this conference we relaxed this rule and
instead provided a 50% ACL membership coupon for all of those
attending (thus the conference itself paid for the other 50% of the
membership price for all of those who took advantage of the offer).

The conference took place at the end of March, and had around 235
participants. While the conference finances have not been finalized,
it looks as if the conference will make a small profit. To date, it
looks like only a small number of people have taken advantage of the
50% off membership coupon. On the other hand, Priscilla, who handled
the conference through her company ARCS, has noticed that ACL-02 has
gained some new participants because of HLT-02.