2017Q3 Reports: NAACL

Report from NAACL, July 2017

Emily M. Bender - Chapter board chair

Joel Tetreault - Treasurer

Executive Committee Meetings

The board will meet during ACL on 31 July 2017. Additionally the Board converses regularly by email.

Treasurer's Report

The NAACL Chapter’s bank account stands at $46,000. In 2017, our total outlays totaled $18,000: $5k for NACLO (as we have done since 2012), $3k for the Emerging Regions Fund (third year in a row at this amount) and $10k to support four students to attend the JSALT Summer School at CMU in June. In addition, we factor in the loss from NAACL 2015 of $37k and the $29k surplus from NAACL 2016.

To contrast with summer of last year, our bank account stood at $61k, but before factoring in the $36k loss from NAACL 2015. That year our expenditures totaled $28k and were comprised of outlays of $5k to NACLO, two Emerging Regions Fund awards at $1.5k apiece ($3k), $10k for the JSALT Summer School and $10k for video processing at NAACL 2016.

The balance of $46k is the second highest it has been at since 2012 for the summer. It is our hope that with continued successful conferences, we will be able to support more initiatives to grow NLP in the Americas.

North American conference in 2017

There is no separate meeting of NAACL this year, as ACL is being held in Vancouver, Canada.

NAACL Officers as of 1 Jan 2017

 Chair         Emily M. Bender	University of Washington
 Secretary     Colin Cherry	National Research Council Canada
 Treasurer     Joel Tetreault	Yahoo! Research
 Past Chair    Hal Daume III	University of Maryland

 Board Members:
 Marie-Catherine de Marneffe	The Ohio State University
 Julia Hockenmaier		University of Illinois
 Philip Resnik	                University of Maryland
 Ellen Riloff	                University of Utah
 Graeme Hirst			University of Toronto (ex-officio, ACL representative)

We have elections this year for Chair, Secretary, two out-going members, plus one more member (see below). The nominating committee will be seeking candidates to fill these roles; this will go for a vote that concludes on 15 Dec 2017.

New and Continuing Initiatives

Last year, in light of the fact that it was difficult to find candidates for the role of Chair (restricted to individuals who have served on the board within the last five years), and in light of the growing size of our community, the NAACL board put forward to the membership an amendment to the Constitution increasing the number of board members by one. This amendment was approved. Accordingly, the 2017 election will seek to fill three board seats (plus Chair and Secretary).

NAACL is currently considering a proposal to add an "Industry Track" at the conference.

North America Conferences in 2018 and 2019

The NAACL board has voted on proposals for two cities in the US for 2018 and 2019. When the contracts are finalized, these cities & dates will be announced. For 2018, the GC will be Lyn Walker and the PC co-chairs will be Heng Ji and Amanda Stent. They are in contact with their counterparts for ACL 2018 and Coling 2018 to coordinate deadlines.

After much discussion regarding hampered travel across the borders of the US (for people arriving from abroad but also for citizens of other countries living in the US), the NAACL board decided to schedule 2018 and 2019 in the US, given that ACL 2017 is in Canada and most of the chapter membership resides in the US. We also took note of the fact that ACL 2018 and 2019 will be outside the US, and EMNLP 2018 will likely be as well.