2024Q3 Reports: Internal Communications Chairs

In order to process the large amount of messages sent to the ACL 2024 alias (acl2024-programchairs@googlegroups.com), 3 internal communication co-chairs were appointed : Claudia Borg (University of Malta), Yannick Parmentier (University of Lorraine, France) and Valentina Pyatkin (Allen Institute for AI, USA). Gaël Guibon (University of Lorraine, France), virtual infrastructure co-chair, was also involved in internal communication in the last weeks before and during the conference.

The main task of the internal communication chairs was to triage the incoming mails. Following decisions made by the conference and program chairs, triage was done via the Freshdesk ticket management portal through the ACL account used by the ACL Rolling Review (a filter was added to assign ACL 2024 emails to the ACL 2024 communication chairs).

To share the workload, an online shared folder was set up (on the nextcloud server of the University of Lorraine) containing a README with the list of ACL 2024 chairs and the following files :

• a shared calendar where each of the communication chairs could indicate her/his availabilities ;

• an internal FAQ where each of the communication chairs could copy/paste already answered questions.

The main difficulties were the following:

• the 2024 communication chairs could not get the list of questions sent to the previous ACL conference ;

• the use of two aliases:

   For questions related to paper submission, email: editors@aclrollingreview.org.
   For all other questions, email: acl2024-programchairs@googlegroups.com. 

led to emails sent to the wrong address ;

• some emails were sent to both the email addresses of the program chairs plus the ACL 2024 alias (in which case it was not clear whether the triage should apply) ;

• the many ways to communicate between chairs (using instant messaging / slack channels, emails or ticket management system) may have hindered communication (it was unclear which channel to prioritize) ;

• the ACL 2024 communication chairs did not attend ACL 2023 and thus missed the chance to physically meet the other 2024 chairs.

The positive points:

• the administrators of the ACL Freshdesk account were very helpful and very reactive ;

• the Program Chairs were very helpful when contacting them through the ACL 2024 slack channels ;

Some recommendations :

• use some long-lasting editing facility (e.g. the ACL wiki) to share the internal FAQ so that communication chairs can benefit from work done at previous editions ;

• have a local contact point for visa questions as early as possible in order to be able to direct questions appropriately and get concrete information ;

• share a common retro-planning (timeline) with the main dates regarding not only the publication process but also the conference organization (many people asked when will be registration open, or when will the information about presentation guidelines available, etc.). It would be helpful to announce these dates on the conference website as soon as possible (or at least to share them with communication chairs).