Tutorial chair handbook

Duties

Tutorial chairs are nominated by the General Chair of the main conference. Their duties are described in here.

Timeline

The timeline for the organisation of tutorials should follow the general conference planning schedule. Below, we complete this schedule with more detailed tasks, as followed for ACL 2020 tutorials. The dates from the conference schedule are highlighted in bold.</ br> In recent years, calls and selection of tutorial proposals are coordinated among some major CL conferences (usually a subset of ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, AACL and COLING). Note that if your conference is the first in the year to come, you will need to be the major driving force in the initial steps described below.</ br> Tutorial proposals are usually reviewed by the tutorial chairs of the coordinating conferences, but it may be a good idea to also rectruit a small group of external reviewers. They should have a good experience in reviewing and a large understanding of the CL domain.

• [T-12]
  • Learn from the General Chair which conferences will have their tutorials coordinated with yours.
  • Establish contact with the Tutorial Chairs of these other conference.
  • Discuss general strategies of the main conference with the General Chair and the Program Chairs:
    • promotion of some topics
    • mailing lists and conference alert portals to be used for all announcements
  • Set up a SoftConf space for proposal submission
    • Solicit the creation of a SoftConf space from support (currently Rich Gerber). Note that submissions will be joint for several conferences but the proceedings will be edited for each conference separately. Therefore, a new SoftConf space will have to be created later for the selected proposals of each conference.
    • If you plan to have external tutorial reviewers, invite them via SoftCon.
  • Set up a joint email for tutorial chairs.
  • Confirm the number and length of tutorial slots with the ACL Business Manager (currently Priscilla Rasmussen)
  • Draft the joint call for tutorials (based on past calls)

• [T-11] Send out the call for tutorials

Past tutorials

The list of recent tutorials contains tutorial authors' names, titles, and to their summaries in conference websites and/or in the ACL Anthology.

Organization of past tutorials

For the last years, the call and selection of tutorials has been coordinated among several major CL conferences. The table below summarizes some data collected from existing reports and from direct contacts with past tutorial chairs.

Year	Coordinated conferences	Tutorial chairs	Submission platform	# Submissions	Reviewers	# Reviews per proposal	# Selected tutorials	Selection criteria	Useful links
2020	ACL EMNLP AACL	ACL: Agata Savary (France), Yue Zhang (China) EMNLP: TBA AACL: TBA	SoftConf	TBA	6 tutorial chairs + external experts	TBA	ACL: TBA EMNLP: TBA ACCL: TBA	Clarity and preparedness Novelty or timely character of the topic Lecturers' experience Likely audience interest Open access of the teaching material Diversity aspects (multilingualism, gender, age and country of teh lecturers) Compatibility with the required venues	TBA
2019	NAACL ACL EMNLP	ACL: Preslav Nakov (Qatar), Alexis Palmer (USA) NAACL: Anoop Sarkar (Canda), Michael Strube (Germany) EMNLP-IJCNLP: Marine Carpuat (USA), Tim Baldwin (Australia)	SoftConf	46-60	6 tutorial chairs	2-3	ACL: 9 NAACL: 6 EMNLP: ?	Presenters (1-5) Description (1-5) Interest Level (1-5) Preparedness (1-5)	Call ACL tutorials NAACL tutorials
2018	ACL NAACL EMNLP COLING	ACL: Yoav Artzi (USA), Jacob Eisenstein (USA)	SoftConf	49	Tutorial chairs		ACL: 8 NAACL: 6 EMNLP: 6 COLING: 6	quality diversity likely audience interest	Call Report ACL tutorials NAACL tutorials EMNLP tutorials COLING tutorials
2017	ACL EACL EMNLP	ACL: Maja Popović (Germany), Jordan Boyd-Graber (USA) EACL: Alex Klementiev (Germany), Lucia Specia (UK) EMNLP: ?	SoftConf	26	Tutorial chairs	3	ACL: 6 EACL: 6 EMNLP: 7	Clarity (description and outline) Topic	Report ACL tutorials EACL tutorials EMNLP tutorials
2016	ACL NAACL EMNLP	ACL: Alexandra Birch (UK), Willem Zuidema (Netherlands) NAACL: Alexander Rush and Bishan Yang EMNLP: Rebecca Hwa and Mohit Bansal	SoftConf	32	Tutorial chairs	2	ACL: 8 NAACL: 6 EMNLP: 6	Relevance to ACL community (15) Quality of instructor (15) Outline and depth/breadth of teh proposal (15) Potential attendance Newly emerging area not previously covered in an ACL-related tutorial (yes or no) Introduction into related fields (yes or no) Overall score (15) 1st preference for venue as indicated in proposal comments	[Report NAACL tutorials EMNLP tutorials

Past calls for tutorials

• NAACL/ACL/EMNLP 2019 joint call for tutorials
• ACL/COLING/EMNLP/NAACL 2018 joint call for tutorials
• EACL 2017 call for tutorials
• NAACL/ACL/EMNLP 2016 joint call for tutorials
• NAACL/ACL/EMNLP 2015 joint call for tutorials

Reports from past tutorial chairs

• ACL 2016 report (by Yoav Artzi and Jacob Eisenstein)
• ACL 2016 report (by Maja Popović and Jordan Boyd-Graber)
• ACL 2016 report (by Alexandra Birch and Willem Zuidema)

Lessons learned by past tutorial chairs

• Continue soliciting both cutting edge and introductory tutorials (Marine Capuat, 2019)
• Ask proposers to express their preferred location/conference in one place (i.e. either in proposal pdf, or in softconf form, not both) to avoid inconsistencies (Marine Capuat, 2019)
• Issues with proceedings edition, when one joint SoftConf space is used for many conferences (see the report) (ACL 2018 chairs)
• Avoid confusion about the submission procedures for the final tutorial descriptions, those were submitted by email in many different formats (ACL 2016 chairs)

Author: Agata Savary, July 2019

Updates are welcome