2014Q3 Reports: Demo Chair

Kalina Bontcheva and Jingbo Zhu co-chaired the ACL 2014 Demo Track. We received 39 submissions, of which 21 were selected for inclusion in the program (acceptance rate of 53.8%) after review by three members of the program committee. We had a program committee of 35, which was much bigger than last year's ACL demos, so we could have three reviews per demo paper. For evaluation criteria, we based ourselves on the criteria developed and reported on in the previous year (2013).

We had some discussion with authors about the anonymity requirement and adjusted our call to only require anonymization within reason (i.e., no renting of outside servers, etc.). Most authors managed to comply with this requirement quite well, though several pointed out that with the demo session, often it was next to impossible to ensure true anonymity. Perhaps we should consider letting go of anonymity next year, as this was also an issue raised in 2013 by the demo authors.

Overall, we were very clear on the process and what was expected of us. Daniel, David, Hua, and Kristina were always on hand to guide us. The publication chairs were very helpful with checking our demo proceedings final version. The START system was easy to use with only 1 minor hiccup, which was resolved quickly.