2008Q3 Reports: SIGPARSE

SIGPARSE Annual Report, June 2008

The main aim of SIGPARSE is to ensure the continuity of the biennial `International Conferences on Parsing Technologies' (IWPT) series. The last conference in this series was the one with number 11, held in June 2007 in Prague, Czech Republic, on the two days immediately preceding the ACL 2007 conference. Stuart Shieber was invited sepaker. Paola Merlo was program chair, Alon Lavie logistic arrangements chair, and Harry Bunt general chair. Priscilla Rasmussen provided valuable assistance in the organization. The number of submitted papers was somewhat less than at previous IWPTs; this was thought to be due to a certain amount of competition of other co-located workshops and of the ACL main conference. It was therefore decided to organize the next IWPT as a stand-alone conference, like on most previous occasions. The twelfth IWPT is planned to take place in Paris on October 7-9, with Eric de la Clergerie as local organizer.

Following ACL's recommendations, SIGPARSE has been getting more organized according to the ACL guidelines for SIGs. In 2007 a constitution was formulated, and approved both by the membership and the ACL board. In Spring 2008 elections for the SIGPARSE board were held, for the first time in the history of SIGPARSE. Harry Bunt, who has been acting as SIGPARSE chair since 1993, decided not to seek re-election as such. Nominees for positions on the board were Alon Lavie as president, John Carroll as secretary, and Harry Bunt and Kenji Sagae as information officers. A call for nominations that was distributed to the membership and placed on the website did not result in additional nominees coming forward, so the nomniees were automatically elected. The membership was nonetheless invited to vote. Voting closes on June 9 and, while not relevant for electing board members, may be interesting to gauge the support and interest of the SIGPARSE members.

Harry Bunt, May 2008.