2016Q3 Reports: NAACL
Report from NAACL, July 2016
Emily M. Bender - Chapter board chair
Joel Tetreault - Treasurer
Executive Committee Meetings
The board had a meeting at NAACL on 12 June 2016. Additionally the Board converses regularly by email.
Treasurer's Report
More details at: http://naacl.org/minutes/2016/NAACL_Treasurer_Report_2016_Business.pdf
As of June 2016, our budget balance was approx $61,000, though the results of NAACL 2015 are not yet fully reflected. We had approximately $18,500 in outlays, including $5000 to NACLO, $3000 through our Emerging Regions Fund, and $10,500 to the Jelinek Summer Workshop. For more information on the NAACL Emerging Regions Fund and supported events, see: http://naacl.org/calls/emerging_regions/index.html
North American conference in 2016
NAACL was held in San Diego CA, USA this year, from 12-17 June. There were 878 attendees (comparable in size to last year's record-breaking NAACL with 901 attendees), representing 41 countries and including 330 students. It featured two keynote addresses, by Regina Barzilay and Ehud Reiter, 6 tutorials, 15 one-day workshops, and SemEval (a 2 day workshop). Ani Nenkova and Owen Rambow were the program chairs and Kevin Knight was the general chair. Nenkova and Rambow developed a thoughtful and innovative approach to recruiting, assigning and supporting reviewers. Preliminary survey results suggest that this was very well received by authors.
NAACL Officers as of 1 Jan 2016
Chair Emily M. Bender University of Washington Secretary Colin Cherry National Research Council Canada Treasurer Joel Tetreault Yahoo! Research Past Chair Hal Daume III University of Maryland
Board Members: Matt Post Johns Hopkins University Fei Xia University of Washington Marie-Catherine de Marneffe The Ohio State University Julia Hockenmaier University of Illinois Graeme Hirst University of Toronto (ex-officio, ACL representative)
We have elections this year for three outgoing members: Joel (treasurer) and Matt and Fei (board members). The nominating committee is actively seeking candidates to replace these members; this will go to a vote that concludes on 15 Dec 2016.
New and Continuing Initiatives
- Backend in START (subcommittee chair: Matt Post). Matt and Colin are collecting feedback from the (NA)ACL community on possible improvements to START, to then communicate to softconf. The effort is being coordinated here: https://trello.com/b/TxoPbCfM/start-wishlist
- NAACL in Latin America (chair: Fei Xia). Fei and Joel have continued work on NAACL outreach in Latin America, including developing a more up-to-date mailing list and then using that mailing list to do a survey of CL researchers in Latin America regarding what role, if any, NAACL should play in promoting NLP research in the region. Initial results are available here: http://naacl.org/minutes/2016/Latin_America_Report_2016.pdf
- Area chair decision survey (chair: Hal Daumé III). Hal and Marie-Catherine ran a survey of area chairs for recent conferences. Key findings: (1) Yes, area chairs read the author responses (2) Reviewer discussion is key; should leave ample time for this and make it easier for ACs to get reviewer discussion started. Further info here: http://naacl.org/minutes/2016/NAACL_Area_Chair_Decision_Survey_Results.pdf
- Expanding the NAACL Board: In light of the increased size of our community and the fact that restrictions on who can serve as chair of the exec have lead to near misses (in terms of no-one eligible being willing to serve), NAACL is seeking to expand the size of the NAACL exec by one board member. We will put a proposed amendment to the NAACL constitution to this effect on our ballot for this fall's election, and if it passes, seek approval from ACL. The first expanded board would be elected for 2018.
- Best Paper changes: NAACL did not distinguish between "Best Paper" and "Best Student Paper" this year, given the high prevalence of student (co)authors on (best) papers. We are considering adding categories such as "Best New Resource" for future conferences.
NAACL is conducting a post-conference survey (see https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdvHCQUcS2dG3fu9SOIIIVwUm3w4rh_ykK_I7kAZaNuGWlUrw/viewform); we will make the results available to ACL once they are in.
North America Conference in 2017
ACL 2017 will take place at the Westin Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver BC, Canada, 30 July-5 August, 2017. The general chair is Chris Callison-Burch and the program co-chairs are Regina Barzilay and Min-Yen Kan.