2019Q3 Reports: Local Organizing Co-chairs
Local Organizing Committee
- Alessandro Lenci, University of Pisa
- Bernardo Magnini, FBK, Trento
- Simonetta Montemagni, ILC-CNR, Pisa
Registration Numbers
Our total registration count as at July 15 2019 is 3024. Of these, 222 are attending only tutorials and/or workshops. In addition, there are 114 exhibitors who are not attending the program sessions. At the moment of writing these numbers are in line with expectations, although a substantial re-planning of the conference venue was necessary at the beginning of December 2018, when (after EMNLP) it became clear enough that the conference would have been much bigger than expected (at that time the venue was estimated for 1600 persons).
The uncertainty on the number of attendees has been an element of concern till the early registration deadline (end of June), which has created some discussion stress between the PCO, the local organizers and the managers of the venue, since all the meeting room assignments and audiovisual equipment had to be completely re-planned with respect to the initial bidding project. We eventually managed to find the best available solutions to satisfy the needs due to the increased size of the conference.
We also have a high number of sponsors, 35 of whom 14 are exhibiting.
After early registration, Tutorials T1 (Latent Structure Models for Natural Language Processing) and T7 (Unsupervised Cross-Lingual Representation Learning) turned out to be the most popular ones, with more than 300 expected participants. The most popular workshops, with more than 400 expected participants, are: WS1 - Fourth Conference on Machine Translation (WMT19); WS5 – BlackboxNLP 2019: Analyzing and interpreting neural networks for NLP; WS9 – NLP for Conversational AI; WS16 – 4th Workshop on Representation Learning for NLP (RepL4NLP-2019).
Welcome Reception and Social Event
Both the Welcome Reception and the Social Event for all main conference attendees will be at the Fortezza da Basso: this was really the only option of sufficient size to accommodate around 3000 attendees in close proximity to the conference venue.
The Welcome Reception will take place on July 28th at 7.00 pm at the Arsenale Pavilion (ground level) inside the Fortezza da Basso, where light refreshments will be provided, along with an open bar and musical entertainment.
The Social Event will be held on July 30th within the Fortezza area and will include a rich entertainment program (music, opera, historical Renaissance flag-weavers, and much more) and a rich buffet dinner (a choice of Italian specialties and drinks).
In addition to the conference attendees, after early registration 98 accompanying person tickets have been purchased for the Welcome Reception and 106 for the Social Event.
Hotels
Through the PCO and the local Convention Bureau, a number of accommodation options were provided in the online registration form, in close vicinity of the conference venue. Bookings from the official housing platform have been more than 450 (total room nights: around 2.200). This means that a consistent portion of attendees was able to arrange their stay in Florence through other booking channels . Till now, we have not received any complaints about lodging.
Organization of the Student Volunteers
The organization of ACL 2019 Student Scholarship and Student Volunteer Program was carried out as follows:
- 15 January 2019: first contacts with Priscilla Rasmussen
- 9 April 2019: the call was published
- 7 June 2019: submission deadline
375 applications were received: 71 for the Student Volunteer Program, 67 for the Student Scholarship and 237 for both. On the basis of the criteria defined in the Call, 11 students as scholarship recipients and 80 as volunteers were selected.
In these days, the Student Volunteers Coordinators we are finalizing the schedule of all volunteers assigning the duties listed below:
- room attendant
- registration desk (supporting local staff)
- info point (supporting local staff)
- cleaning/refreshment supervision
- social events supervision
Next week they will circulate the final schedule with number and name of students allocated to each duty.
Childcare
A kids area has been arranged very close to the Registration Desk, in front of the Spadolini Pavilion, to welcome children from 1.5 to 12 years for registered participants, upon reservation: they will be taken care of and engaged in fun activities by specialized, English-speaking teachers.
The room is around 200 sqmt.: there will be a relaxing area with mats and pillows for children to rest (no strollers provided), snacks, water, fruit juices will be served.
Children can attend for a maximum of eight hours per day within available hours from July 28th to August 2nd. Number of requests received: 18 kids.
Remote Presentations
Following the experience at ACL 2018, for presenters who are unable to attend the conference due to visa or other issues, we offer the option of remote presentations. This is organized both for oral and poster presentations, providing a Skype remote presentation session. Two Remote Presentation Chairs have been appointed, who have to manage remote presentations both before the conference (contact authors through PC chairs, receive posters and videos) and during the conference: Simone Filice (Amazon) and Alberto Lavelli (FBK).
Various
We have been experiencing some difficulty in collecting all the material for both the handbook, web site and the app. Information (papers, posters, workshops, tutorials, demos, SRW posters, TACL presentations, schedule, session chairs, rooms, links to ACL Anthology, etc.) comes from different sources and in different formats, and the whole process is not always well defined as it should be. As the conference is growing in complexity, we think that a sort of centralized repository of relevant data might be very useful.
This year, presentations at the oral sessions will be managed through a “slide center”. It means that presenters have to deliver their slides at least 10 minutes before the start of the session at the slide center, which will then manage the projection in the room screens as well as the video recording of the speaker. Slides and videos will be made available almost in real time.
This year posters in each session have been numbered, and their numbers are reported in the handbook, the web site and the app. As a consequence, there is no need for a “poster guide”.
Tasks undertaken
For ACL 2019, a Professional Conference Organizer was appointed who has been managing interactions with the venue, the Fortezza da Basso, and contracts such as for the construction of the Exhibit and posters space, the Social Event, congress materials, catering services etc. They also arranged blocks at local hotels. The Local Organizers have acted as the liaison between the ACL Executive and the PCO, although for several matters related to budget and sponsorships, there was a direct contact between the PCO and the ACL (Priscilla).
Here is a list summarizing the tasks undertaken by the Local Arrangements so far:
- Determine required rooms for tutorials, main conference, and workshops along with the ACL Treasurer, communicating with the PCO to ensure the needs. These had to be adjusted due to changes in registrations.
- Work with the ACL Treasurer and the PCO to prepare a detailed working budget, used to track costs vs income and set registration fees, getting approval from the ACL Treasurer
- Work with the PCO to build the registration form, test the form and payment system, open registration, and manage the registrations and requested cancellations or changes or questions from attendees
- Interacting with the Student Volunteers Coordinators to identify the main functions and roles of volunteers at the conference.
- Managing all communications with sponsors and exhibitors, organizing exhibit arrangements and ensuring sponsorship benefits are fulfilled.
- Planning of the exhibit space and allocation of exhibitors to booths. Preparation of the Exhibition Guide in conjunction with the PCO and distribution of the guide to exhibitors.
- Create and coordinate input to the conference website, appointing a webmaster and ensuring timely updates to the website of registration and visa details, program details, sponsor logos, etc.
- Appoint a conference app responsible (Andrea Cimino) and collaborate with him for the design and release of the app. The conference app chair performed the following set of activities. After receiving the access to the Whova CMS platform, he adapted the code used by the NAACL 2019 App chair to meet the ACL 2019 conference needs. After receiving the attendees and conference data by the organizers, he started testing the import procedure into the platform. After the first tests, now the app seems to be almost ready for the event.
- Make the necessary arrangements for the meetings of the CL Journal Board, ACL Exec, the Recognition and Thank You Dinner, and the post-conference breakfast.
- The PCO handled the invitation letter requirements for visa application processing although we fielded many inquiries on this as local organisers.
- Make arrangements for the welcome cocktail and the social event at the Fortezza da Basso
- Ongoing coordination with the conference venue on internet and audio/visual requirements, signage, and setup
- Development of menus of coffee breaks, light refreshments to be served throughout the conference and for the dinner at the social event.
- Liaise with the workshops chairs so that all the special requirements of workshop organizers are met (e.g. lunches, video recording, etc.)
- Design and order the conference bags
- Design and order Student Volunteer t-shirts
- Design and order via PCO all signage and banners for the conference and arrange local printing
- Coordinate design and production of badges with the PCO.
- Make room assignments for all parts of the conference and update or change these assignments based on registration numbers. Provide this to the Handbook Chair and App Coordinator as well as to the Conference Webmaster.
- Prepare and order printing of the conference handbook.
Ongoing work
- Make final arrangements for and coordinate with the venue on all space usage and final layout and setup of posters
- Check allocation of student volunteers to volunteer sessions
- Collect or creation of all materials for conference bags (sponsorship materials, arranged for local maps and tourist guide through Tourism Office, print of the conference handbook, etc.) in preparation for the bag stuffing to be done the day before the conference begins.
- Meet and supervise Student Volunteers onsite
- Be available for behind-the-scene repair of anything that might go wrong