2020Q3 Reports: SIGEL

Antti Arppe and Mans Hulden

SIGEL is ACL's special interest group on Endangered Languages.

MEMBERSHIP

SIGEL was officially approved on Oct. 4, 2019. During the first nine months, the membership has reached 85. We will be undertaking a second membership drive in conjunction with the forthcoming first elections as well as publicity concerning our next workshop (ComputEL-4).

WORKSHOP (ComputEL-4)

Following up on three preceding events, we will be organizing, in virtual format, the 4th instance of the Workshop on the Use of Computational in the Study of Endangered Languages (ComputEL-4: https://computel-workshop.org/computel-4/) in March 2021, in association with the 7th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC-7). We are anticipating 40-50 participants. We intend to hold the fifth ComputEL at an ACL-cycle event, potentially in collaboration with another ACL-SIG.

The Organizing Committee for ComputEL-4 consists of the Executive Board as well as other SIGEL members:

• Antti Arppe, University of Alberta
• Jeff Good, Buffalo University
• Atticus Harrigan, University of Alberta (community track chair)
• Mans Hulden, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Jordan Lachler, University of Alberta
• Sarah Moeller, University of Colorado, Boulder (review & computational track chair)
• Alexis Palmer, University of North Texas
• Miikka Silfverberg, University of British Columbia
• Lane Schwartz, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The Program Committee for ComputEL-4 has also been recruited, and can be found in: https://computel-workshop.org/committees/

OTHER ACTIVITIES

ENDORSEMENTS

SIGEL endorsed the 1st SLTU-CCURL2020 (Spoken Language Technologies for Under-resourced languages + Collaboration and Computing for Under-Resourced Languages: http://sltu-ccurl-2020.ilc.cnr.it/), which took place virtually at LREC 2020 (May 2020)

COMMUNICATIONS

SIGEL WEBSITE

We have set up SIGEL's website (https://acl-sigel.github.io/). Our website contains information about our previous and planned future activities, as well as our governance (Executive Board) and up-to-date membership.

TWITTER ACCOUNT

We have created a twitter account (@acl_sigel) for disseminating information relevant to SIGEL.

MAILING LIST

We have created a Google Group for the SIGEL membership: sigel@googlegroups.com - and for the SIGEL Executive Committee: sigel-ec@googlegroups.com

GOVERNANCE

The original proposers of SIGEL, Antti Arppe and Mans Hulden, have acted as the interim President and Secretary, respectively.

In addition, we have designated the Organizing Committee of ComputEL-3 as the interim Executive Committee for SIGEL.

(INTERIM) EXECUTIVE Committee

• (Interim) President: Antti Arppe, University of Alberta
• (Interim) Secretary: Mans Hulden, University of Colorado, Boulder
• (Interim) Members-At-Large:
  • Jeff Good, University of Buffalo
  • Jordan Lachler, University of Alberta
  • Alexis Palmer, University of Northern Texas
  • Lane Schwartz, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • Miikka Silfverberg, University of British Columbia

ELECTIONS

As secretary, Mans Hulden will be organizing the elections, to take place around the beginning of Fall 2020.