Policy on joint conferences

Policy for ACL conferences held jointly with local Chapters

Conference Handbook - Joint Conferences Policy

This document outlines the procedures and sets out the respective roles of the ACL and Chapter in the planning and organisation of ACL conferences that are joint with a local chapter.

• The name of the conference will be "The nn Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics".
• The standard form for the acronym of the conference will be ACL-year(e.g., ACL-02)
• The publicity of the conference (e.g., Call for Papers, Call for Participation, programme, web-site) will recognise the participation of both the ACL and the Chapter.
• The planning and organisation of the conference will be overseen by a special ad-hoc Coordination Group comprising:
  • President, Secretary, and Treasurer of the ACL, or their representatives. (Current ACL policy is for the President to be represented in this capacity by the past-President.)
  • Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer of the Chapter, or their representatives
  • business officer of the ACL
  • one additional member from each of the ACL executive committee and the Chapter board. The newest member of the ACL Executive Committee will be the additional representative from ACL.
• This group will be formed at least 24 months before the due date of the conference, but preferably before this.
• The group will be chaired by the ACL President (or representative).
• The first task of the group will normally be to send out the Call for Bids and to oversee the site-selection process. It is recognised that in some cases (e.g., in order to co-locate with other conferences or meetings) the Call for Bids may be broadcast prior to the formation of the group.
• Early tasks will also include securing a domain name for the conference (e.g., acl2002.org).
• The role of the ACL executive members on the group will be to ensure that ACL standards are maintained and to assist the Local Arrangements Chair in securing international sponsorship.
• The role of the Chapter board members will be to ensure that the conference has a local flavour and to assist the Local Arrangements Chair in securing local sponsorship. This also includes tasks like keeping an eye out for the geographical distribution of the conference committee members, proposing a local invited speaker etc.
• In coordinating the conference, this group is the liaison point between the General Chair of the conference, and the ACL exec and Chapter board.
• The ACL exec and Chapter board will be consulted on decisions pertaining to the selection of the conference site, the general chair, the other conference chairs (e.g., PC, Workshops, Tutorial).
• Publicly, this will be a shadow group --- i.e., it gets no billing on the Conference Committee.
• The financing for the conferences (i.e., all surpluses/losses from the conference) will be split evenly between the International ACL and the Chapter.
• When there are differences in policies or procedures between the local chapter and the parent organization, ACL policies and procedures take precedence.

Revised and approved by Executive Board, July 2001, modified July 2005