Bid Guidelines

This page provides guidelines for preparing a bid for hosting the ACL conference. The guidelines link to two additional spreadsheets, explained further below: a detailed budget spreadsheet to be filled as part of the submission, synchronized with the bid document; a task-list spreadsheet, which details many of the tasks involved in hosting the conference and suggests several options for delegating a varying amount of the work to the ACL office and/or to a professional conference organizer.

Preliminary and Final Bids

You are first requested to submit a preliminary bid. Promising bidders will be asked by the Conference Coordinating Committee to provide additional information and turn their bid into the final one, according to the schedule published in the Call for Bids. The purpose of a preliminary bid is to give the committee a detailed description of the organization, venue, and setting. The first round of review will help bidders to create a stronger bid, which is better tailored to the needs of the ACL. The purpose of the final bid is to convince the committee that the organizers are capable of running a large scientific conference with considerable professionalism and attention to detail.

Covering Letter

Include a cover letter addressed to the ACL, naming venue and possible dates, identifying contact person(s) and contact details, signed.

Organization

Local Organizing Committee

Please name the members of the local organizing committee, including titles and affiliations. For each person, provide a statement about their activities in the CL community and their experience organizing scientific events.

Local CL Community

Describe the profile of the local CL community, including any research groups, graduate programs, professional bodies, companies.

Professional Conference Organizer

It is typically advisable to involve a Professional Conference Organizer (PCO) for the local organization, while the amount of work delegated to the PCO might vary. Where geographically appropriate, Priscilla Rasmussen, from the ACL office, might take responsibility for typical tasks of a PCO, as coordinated directly with her.

Specify (roughly) the intended split of tasks between the local organizers, a PCO and/or the ACL office (see the Task List Spreadsheet section below for detail).

Identify the organization that will be responsible for such tasks as local arrangements, including venues, catering, accommodation, the social program, and finances. What is the scale of their operation? List major scientific meetings organized recently.

Dates

Bidders should indicate one or more options for the conference dates. Sometimes, additional alternatives might be explored when negotiating with the committee. When planning the dates please check first with the conference committee chair for the latest known constraints for that year, such as dates of related conferences.

Venue

Conference

Describe the main auditorium, theatres for four parallel sessions, spaces for tutorials and workshops, and an option for meeting rooms on-demand. Describe capacity, seating style, A/V facilities, sloping vs level floor, availability of (fold-out) tables in theatres.

Workshops - capacity for 2 two-day workshops, and 8 one-day workshops (6 per each day)

Dates for which the venues have been booked.

Accommodation

List categories of accommodation, considering students as well, and their approximate capacities and prices. State the proximity of the accommodation to the conference venue, and the means of access.

Dates for which room blocks have been tentatively reserved.

Food and Social Program

Describe plans for breaks, student lunch, welcome reception, and banquet. Provide detail about food items, matching their cost in the budget spreadsheet. ACL encourages a tradition of some form of dancing for participants at the banquet.

Estimated Costs Summary

Provide a one-page summary of the budget spreadsheet, specifying approximate total cost for each component of the conference (main conference, tutorials, workshops, banquet, overheads) and the VAT situation (or similar taxes – see comment in budget spreadsheet). Please give figures in both local currency and US dollars, and specify the exchange rate. Include any further relevant explanations for your budget spreadsheet.

Setting

Map

Provide a detailed map showing positions of venues and accommodation, and other relevant locations (if any -– e.g. food courts, subway/bus stops).

Food

Describe the eating options within and near the conference venue.

City

Describe the city and region, and the principal attractions. What is the climate at this time of year? Any optional social program. List public cultural events scheduled for the conference period.

Transportation

Describe the air and ground transportation that provides access to the city. What is the commute time from regional airport(s) and railway stations to the venue?

Extras

(Not needed for preliminary bid)

• Letters of support
• Photographs of venues and regional attractions
• Evidence of sponsorship
• Information about visa, driver licenses

Budget Spreadsheet

The full budget is detailed in a separate spreadsheet (!!link here), with which the bid document should be consistent. The budget only includes items which vary from one venue to another. Costs which are largely fixed across venues (such as proceedings) are omitted. Overall budget will be coordinated with the ACL Treasurer and business office.

Most items in the spreadsheet are self-explained or include explanatory comments. Here are some additional guidelines:

• Some expenses will have both a constant component and a per-person component, and each line of the budget includes both components. For example, the banquet might have a cost for the venue rental plus a per-person cost for food. In most cases, however, only one component will be non-zero.
• Complete the budget in your local currency, and provide a multiplicative conversion factor for USD in the appropriate cell.
• The spreadsheet total costs are computed using conservative (lower-bound) assumptions for the size of the conference, as specified in the first lines of the spreadsheet. However, when considering venue and accommodation capacities upper-bound assumptions should be made, as specified in the relevant spreadsheet lines (there might be some flexibility here according to actual conditions, e.g. possibly not all rooms for parallel sessions should reach the maximal session capacity).
• Banquet cost should be in a given range <!!specify>
• Equipment-related costs should include security arrangements, if relevant

Task List Spreadsheet

As mentioned above, the organizers may choose to delegate a varying amount of the organization work to a Professional Conference Organizer (PCO) and/or to the ACL Office (Priscilla Rasmussen). As auxiliary information for your task planning, we attached (<!! Link> here) the Task List spreadsheet used for the NAACL 2010 call for bids. The spreadsheet lists many of the organization tasks and specifies three prototypical models for sharing the organization load. Option A represents the maximum amount of work for the local organizers, while Option C is the least amount of work. B is in between. Please indicate, in the PCO section of the BID, which of these three models captures best your preferred model and include relevant explanation as needed. The precise details of who does what will be further discussed with promising bidders, you are not committing to specific tasks at this point.

The budget items under the administration section, and particularly Conference Management Fees, should correspond to the cost of work planned for a PCO and/or Priscilla. Please discuss directly with Priscilla the plans and costs for her roles.