2018Q3 Reports: Local Organizing Committee

Local Organizing Committee

Timothy Baldwin, The University of Melbourne
Trevor Cohn, The University of Melbourne
Karin Verspoor, The University of Melbourne

Remote Presentation Chair

Afshin, Rahimi, The University of Melbourne

Registration Numbers

Our total registration count as at July 1, 2018 is 1193. Of these, 54 are attending only tutorials and/or workshops. In addition, there are 39 exhibitors who are not attending the program sessions.

We also have high number of sponsors, at about 30, of whom 17 are exhibiting. This includes a publisher and a non-sponsoring exhibitor.

The Social Event for all main conference attendees will be at the Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium. We realise that this will mean 3 aquarium-based social events in 5 years of ACL (Baltimore, Vancouver, and Melbourne), but this was really the only option of sufficient size to accommodate around 1500 attendees in close proximity to the conference venue. In addition to our attendees, around 42 accompanying person tickets have been purchased, underlining the demand for this option and importance of maintaining it in the future. In addition, 27 extra tickets have been purchased for the Welcome Reception.

Hotels

Through the PCO, a number of accommodation options were provided in the registration form, in close vicinity of the conference venue. The Crown Casino proved particularly popular and was booked out early on, but there was sufficient capacity at the other venues that this wasn't a significant issue (although we know of a small number of people who were disappointed at not being able to book at Crown).

Various

Liaisons with Workshop and Tutorial Chairs have been smooth, and assuming we are aware of all of the requests from the workshops organisers, we believe we will be able to accommodate everything. Space for posters is somewhat limited for the workshop days, but with some careful synchronisation between workshops, we have been able to fit everything in.

Two tutorials are especially popular (T2: Neural Approaches to Conversational AI and T7: Deep Reinforcement Learning for NLP). The most popular workshops (each well over 150 attendees) are the 3rd Workshop on Representation Learning for NLP (RepL4NLP), and Workshop on Machine Reading for Question Answering (MRQA).

One thing we will trial this year is, for presenters who are unable to attend the conference due to visa issues, providing the option of a remote presentation, which will be managed by the Remote Presentation Chair (a new role for ACL 2018). We will gauge how this goes for ACL 2018, to see whether this is something ACL should endorse for future conferences (noting there is also a petition in play, asking that authors in this situation be allowed to choose which *ACL conference they present at).

Due to relative lack of demand for childcare, rather than ACL providing onsite childcare, we opted to direct anyone wishing to make use of childcare with the services offered by the Pan Pacific Hotel (the hotel that collocates with the conference venue). This appears to have been well received by those looking to make use of childcare, and is a considerably cheaper option for ACL.

Tasks undertaken:

For ACL2018, a Professional Conference Organizer was appointed who has been managing interactions with the venue, the Melbourne Convention Bureau, and contracts such as for the construction of the Exhibit and posters space, the Social Event, etc. They also arranged blocks at local hotels. The Local Organizers have acted as the liaison between the ACL Executive and the PCO.

Here is a list summarizing the tasks undertaken by the Local Arrangements so far:

- Determine required rooms for tutorials, main conference, and workshops along with the ACL Treasurer, communicating with the PCO to ensure the needs. These had to be adjusted due to changes in registrations.

- Work with the ACL Treasurer and the PCO to prepare a detailed working budget, used to track costs vs income and set registration fees, getting approval from the ACL Treasurer

-Work with the PCO to build the registration form, test the form and payment system, open registration, and manage the registrations and requested cancellations or changes or questions from attendees

- Coordinating the selection of student volunteers and distribution of student travel grants. This was done in collaboration with the Student Research Workshop coordinators. We had over 150 students apply for just under 60 volunteer spots. Preference selection criteria were defined based on first authorship of long papers. Travel funds were allocated based on need, travel costs, and region of origin. There were some NSF funds that were only available to US-based students.

- Managing all communications with sponsors and exhibitors, organizing exhibit arrangements and ensuring sponsorship benefits are fulfilled.

- Planning of the exhibit space and allocation of exhibitors to booths. Preparation of the Exhibition Guide in conjunction with the PCO and distribution of the guide to exhibitors.

- Create and coordinate input to the conference website, appointing a webmaster and ensuring timely updates to the website of registration and visa details, program details, sponsor logos, etc.

- Make the necessary arrangements for the meetings of the CL Journal Board, ACL Exec, the Recognition and Thank You Dinner, and the post-conference breakfast

- The PCO handled the invitation letter requirements for visa application processing although we fielded many inquiries on this as local organisers.

- Make arrangements for the social event of the conference which is at the Melbourne Aquarium

-Ongoing coordination with the conference venue on internet and audio/visual requirements, signage, and setup

-Development of menus to be served throughout the conference

- Liaise with the workshops chairs so that all the special requirements of workshop organizers are met (extra poster boards, receptions, lunches, etc.)

- Liaise with the representatives of the recruiters, hotel and others for the Recruitment Lunch (limited to 400 attendees and 20-25 recruitment institutions)

- Design and order the conference bags

- Design and order Student Volunteer t-shirts

- Design and order via PCO all signage and banners for the conference and arrange local printing

- Make room assignments for all parts of the conference and update or change these assignments based on registration numbers. Provide this to the Handbook Chair and App Coordinator as well as to the Conference Webmaster.

- Prepare and order printing of the conference handbook.

Ongoing work:

- Make final arrangements for and coordinate with the venue on all space usage and final layout and setup of posters, specialty lunches and other non-standard requests, menus and a/v

- Allocation of student volunteers to volunteer sessions

- Make registration refunds to those who could not get visas and other cancellations

- Collect or creation of all materials for conference bags (poster session guide, sponsorship materials, arranged for local maps and tourist guide through Tourism Office, conference handbook, etc.) in preparation for the bag stuffing to be done the day before the conference begins.

- Coordinate design and production of badges with the PCO.

- Meet and supervise Student Volunteers onsite

- Be available for behind-the-scene repair of anything that might go wrong

Post-Conference work:

- Make registration refunds to those who could not get visas and other cancellations

- Arrange for payment of final bills