2009Q1 Reports: EACL
EACL Report, December 2008/January 2009
Alex Lascarides/Giorgio Satta, Chair
Giorgio Satta/Sien Moens, Chair-Elect
Anette Frank/Joakim Nivre, Secretary
Mike Rosner, Treasurer
EACL 2009
EACL 2009 received 360 submissions for the main programme, which is a record. The program commitee has accepted 100 submissions, which gives an acceptance rate of 28%. (As a term of comparison, EACL 2006 received 264 and accepted 52, with an acceptance rate of 20%.) EACL 2009 also received a record number of workshop and tutorial proposals. The committees picked 10 workshops all together, and 4 tutorials.
Alex Lascarides did a site visit in October. She and the local organisers decided to change the rooms we hired at the conference site, so as to get much better public spaces for the lunches and coffee breaks. Alex also visited the hotels in the area, which are plentiful, clean, and at a wide variety of prices.
Sponsorship money has been a real problem. The sponsorship chairs sent out over 170 applications, but so far only one has responded positively. The other ACL conferences for 2009 will probably experience similar problems. On the other hand, the organizing committee has managed to get the amount of money from the local sponsors that had originally been indicated in the submitted conference budget.
Financial report
| CHAPTER FINANCES 2008 | |
| balance | |
| 31/12/2007 | 15,996 |
| EXPENSES | |
| Sponsorships | |
| ESSLII 2008 | -3,000.00 |
| EACL09 Site Visit | -354.42 |
| total expenses | -3,354.00 |
| 31/12/2008 | 12,642 |
[Mike Rosner 31/12/2008]
EACL Board Elections
Elections for the EACL Board have been run by the end of 2008. In October, the list of nominated candidates were sent to the Chapter. By December 1st, no additional nominations were received.
The new EACL Board composition for the period 2009-2010 is as follows:
| Chair: | Giorgio Satta (University of Padua, Italy) |
| Chair-elect: | Sien Moens (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) |
| Secretary: | Joakim Nivre (Uppsala University, Sweden) |
| Treasurer: | Mike Rosner (University of Malta) |
Advisory Board members:
Eric Gaussier (Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble, France)
Josef van Genabith (Dublin City University, Ireland)
Toni Martí (University of Barcelona, Spain)
Kiril Simov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria)
Nominating Committee:
Anette Frank (University of Heidelberg, Germany)
Alex Lascarides (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Gertjan van Noord (University of Groningen, Netherlands)
Felisa Verdejo (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain)
Student Board Members:
Vera Demberg (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Yanjun Ma (Dublin City University, Ireland)
Nils Reiter (University of Heidelberg, Germany)
The EACL welcomes the new members of the EACL Board and greatly thanks the outgoing members for their years of excellent service to the CL community:
| Alex Lascarides | Chair |
| Giorgio Satta | Chair-elect |
| Anette Frank | Secretary |
| Paola Merlo | Advisory Board |
| John Carroll | Nominating Committee |
| Claire Gardent | Nominating Committee |
No EACL 2011; Call for Bids for EACL 2012
In the EACL Board meeting 2008 it was decided that no Chapter Meeting will be held in 2011. Holding a 2011 meeting would mean three EACL conferences in subsequent years, which could make it difficult to find proposers for suitable locations.
Sien Moens is currently working on the CfB for 2012, to be sent out before EACL 2009 takes place.
Policy on financial responsibilities for SIG Workshops at EACL conferences
In the EACL BOard meeting 2009 a new policy was adopted according to which SIGs share profits and losses from EACL meetings they are co-located with. The policy in question is recorded on the EACL board web pages (private pages).
EACL Sponsorships
EACL provided support for ESSLLI 2008 in Hamburg, by sponsoring one course with an amount of 3000 Euros in total: Maarten de Rijke and Edgar Meij: Statistical Language Modeling for Information Access.
For 2009, the EACL has announced sponsorships for a number of student participants of the EACL 2009 main conference, the EACL 2009 poster/ demo session and/or the EACL 2009 student research workshop. We have received 6 applications, and we can sponsor 5 of them. We are currently in the selection process. Priority will be given to students from Eastern Europe and more generally, to students from countries with hard currency problems (within the geographical area covered by EACL). Details can be found at http://www.eacl2009.gr/conference/studentSponsorships .