Demo chair duties

Demo Chair Overview

Conference Handbook - Demo Chair Overview

The Demo Chair is responsible for assembling the system demonstration papers to be presented in the main conference program. This includes the following steps:

• Selecting the demo program committee (number calculated based on having three reviewers per paper).
• Requesting demo paper submissions via a Call-for-System-Demonstrations and advertising via publicity chair.
• Call-for-System-Demonstrations should encourage a diverse set of submissions, ranging from early research prototypes to mature production-ready systems, including technologically innovative industrial systems. Of particular interest are publicly available open-source or open-access systems (see sample call below).
• Assigning three expert reviewers per submission (with an extra paper bidding step, if needed).
• Encouraging reviewer discussions per paper, esp. For the borderline and disagreement ones.
• Making accept/reject decisions for each submission based on reviewer recommendations and the number of demo slots in the main conference (conveyed by the general/program chairs). It is important to maintain a balance of accepted­ topic areas, underrepresented or neglected areas, etc.
• Creating descriptions for the conference program and assisting the publication chairs in preparing the companion volume of the ACL 2017 demo proceedings.
• Making sure that demo display requirements (monitors, cables, poster boards, etc.) are conveyed to the local arrangements chair and to the authors.
• Optionally, selecting a best demo paper (and runner-up).
• Coordinating with general/program chairs to decide the time slot for demo presentation (e.g., jointly with an evening poster session).
• The Demo Chair should work very closely with the Program Chairs, to coordinate the amount of time in the program available for demos, the meeting space, and the demo descriptions for the conference Proceedings.

Sample Call-for-Demos

• ACL 2017 Call-for-Demos
• ACL 2016 Call-for-Demos