2015Q1 Reports: ACL 2017

The Call for Bids for ACL 2017 has been on the web since 13th October, 2014 at http://www.aclweb.org/website/node/438

Suzan Hauszner, US Sales Manager of Calgary TELUS convention center has been in contact with myself and Priscilla regarding the ACL17 bid. A Letter of Intent was submitted on Dec 8, 2014 by Prof. Yingxu Wang, Director, Laboratory for Cognitive Computing, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary. Prof. Wang will serve as the local organizing chair, should Calgary get selected as the venue of ACL 2017. "ACL17 will be fully supported by the City of Calgary, the University of Calgary, and the Calgary TELUS Convention Center", Prof. Wang writes in the letter.

Besides this bid, Prof. Thamar Solorio of University of Houston introduced me to Laura Alonso Alemany who is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Cordoba, Argentina. Her NLP research group is interested in placing a bid for ACL 2017. Laura has organized conferences before, one with over 700 participants, and has worked with Priscilla in the past. Laura wrote, "I am in contact with Agustín Gravano and also José Castaño, who are involved in the organization of IJCAI this year in Buenos Aires. I expect we will be able to collaborate for this event as well!".

Vancouver was a prospect (Prof. Giuseppe Carenini, UBC). But Giuseppe will be Program Chair, SIGDIAL, 2017 and so expressed inability. I wrote to UWash and GATech, but did not get enthusiastic responses.

The ACL 2017 Coordinating Committee, made up of members of the Executive Committee of the ACL and NAACL, will select the General Chair and the Program Committee Co-Chairs for the conference.

Important Dates

   November 1, 2014 - Final Call for Bids
   January 15, 2015 - Notify intention to submit proposal
   March 1, 2015 - Draft proposals due
   Through March, 2015 - Feedback to bidders
   Apr 15, 2015 - Final bids due
   May 15, 2015 - Bid selected

ACL 2017 Coordinating committee:

From NAACL:

  Hal Daume III, Chair <me@hal3.name>
  Michael White, Secretary <mwhite@brutus.ling.ohio-state.edu>
  Joel Tetreault, Treasurer <tetreaul@gmail.com>
  Emily Bender, Other Member <ebender@uw.edu>

From ACL:

  Pushpak Bhattacharyya, VP, 2015 <pb@cse.iitb.ac.in> 
  Dragomir Radev, secretary <radev@umich.edu> 
  Graeme Hirst,treasurer <gh@cs.toronto.edu> 
  Yejin Choi, exec member in-charge conferences <yejin@cs.washington.edu> 
  Priscilla Rasmussen, ACL business manager <acl@aclweb.org>