Post-conference Breakfast (ACL2018)

July 19, 2018

Melbourne

• General Chair
  • Remote Presentations
    • In ACL2018: 7 remote presentations. Recorded presentations and live Q&A, which worked well.
    • Need a Remote presentation Chair. It is better to be someone who knows the local situation in rooms.
    • Should check the reasons to prevent abuse of remote presentations.
    • Google is open to providing robots for remote presentation, if they are notified enough in advanve.
  • Need a way to contact all attendees.

• Local Chairs
  • Needed an APP chair. The company didn't work well (consider changing); cheap and not very receptive (slow response)
  • A good practice: Use a shared file space for the documents; single place; Central point of control for the program (schedule)
  • Use slack; make sure everybody is connected

• Video Chair
  • Add another video chair
  • Dealing with the company, formatting, look and feel.
  • Priscilla: The US company doing it for NAACL and ACl in US is willing to go to Europe (EMNLP); Similar to START, should perhaps go into an agreement for all conferences, not just choose cheapest

• Handbook Chairs / publications Chairs
  • Don't underestimate the work and time needed.
  • Difference between final submission and modifications that are included later; copyright, etc.
  • Lack of documentation on the procedure

• SRW
  • Mentors at submission time to assist paper writing
  • mentors for the conference. Maybe ask people at registration time if they want to be mentors, Priscilla can provide a list of registered people.

• Demos
  • Demos should have more pages for screenshots

• Workshops
  • Priscilla needs to know 6-8 weeks ahead about posters - number and locations, workshop schedules need to be adjusted
  • Take care of this during the bidding/selection process too. Some workshops are very heavy on posters.

• Publicity
  • People ask questions in social media and they expect fast responses. Need constant checking

• Sponsorship
  • PCO to interact with the sponsors? Space and other parameters are conflictive; but well specified in the contract.
• Priscilla suggests to be harsh if they do not meet the requirements from the contract.

• Discussion about poster sessions at ACL 2019
  • There are three options: lunch / evening / parallel
  • Consider to have longer lunch break and go later into evening
  • survey questions about poster time for people?
  • Bernardo-Lluís-David-Anna to propose alternatives that are compatible with the venue

• Post-conference survey
  • GC of ACL2018 will contact the ACL2019 organizers to check the forms and to add questions that are relevant for ACL2019.

• Business meeting
  • Business meeting of ACL2018 was on the second day (for the first time). The time slot did not work well. Find a better time (it is better if there is a regular session afterwards).

• Accommodation
  • Better advertisement of the hotels and accommodation (near the venue). Florence is very touristic and the conference is at the peak of the summer; place clear suggestions.

• Internet
  • Strong Internet is needed. Can be expensive, but it is a must. Can attend another (CS) conference beforehand at the same venue to test the Internet condition.
  • Live streaming at the conference: might need to block it from use in the venue.

• Local chairs and general chairs and program chairs will have registration refunded.