Vice-president

Vice President duties

Specific Responsibilities

1. Conference N+2: The vice-president is responsible for overseeing the site selection for the conference that will be held the year after he or she is president. For example, in 1999 the site should be chosen for the conference that will be held in 2001. This involves posting and circulating a Call for Bids, contacting individuals who might potentially submit a quality bid and encouraging them to do so, overseeing the bid submission process, and overseeing the bid selection which is voted on by the ACL Exec. Site selection is constrained by the rotation among Europe, US, and Asia. The site is generally announced at the conference two years in advance. Note: there needs to be very careful liaison with the ACL Secretary-Treasurer to check out some financial aspects *before* any decision is made. (Attached to the bottom are the site-selection guidelines that Don Walker used.) In the past the VP concentrated on applying guidelines to do with whether there was a willing CL community to do Local Arrangements etc, asking potential LA Chairs etc, and did not investigate anything to do with such matters as up-front financial deposits, whether the LA Chair would intend to use a Conference Service etc. In earlier years there was a sort of cosy academic style assumed, but one or two straws in the wind in recent years suggest more care is needed not to get inadvertently into untoward financial commitments.
   SITE REQUIREMENTS FOR ACL CONFERENCES
   
   1. A person willing to assume responsibility for local arrangements who has had some prior involvement in ACL activities. Frequent meeting attendance coupled with strong interest would be enough, although having presented papers at conferences or published in CL would be preferable.
   2. A local support group of colleagues actively engaged in computational linguistic research.
   3. An auditoriums to hold plenary sessions containing 400-600 people during the conference itself, as well as large rooms for the main parallel technical sessions.
   4. Facilities for tutorial sessions: several rooms that accommodate from 50 to 100 people. Needed the day before the conference proper.
   5. Exhibit space close to the plenary session room with power, phone lines, adequate air conditioning, and security. Requirements will vary, but it might be reasonable to plan for 8-10 publishers and 10-15 system exhibitors, occupying about 2000 square feet (10 x 10 booth size). Having separate spaces for each exhibitor would facilitate scheduling, but clustering is possible if space is limited. Vendors like Symbolics, DEC, Xerox, and Sun might be prevailed upon to provide hardware which can be shaed by the exhibitors.
   6. Two rooms for student paper sessions holding about 100 people, although the plenary session room could be used for one of them.
   7. Possible need for rooms holding 50-100 beforeor after the conference for SIG-sponsored or other workshops.
   8. Registration space close to auditorium with telephone line access and that can be locked up so that registration materials do not have to be moved.
   9. Refreshment area close to auditorium, registration, exhibits, and tutorials.
   10. Convenient housing and eating places in reasonable proximity to the conference site with lower cost accommodations for students. In the past, 30-50% of the registrants have used dormitory space. It is preferable if the university can handle registration for dormitory housing.
   11. Catering and banquet facilities.
   12. Conference management office support would be helpful.
   13. Reasonably convenient transportation access to the area in which the conference is being held.
   14. Network communication links.
   15. Location with regard to previous and subsequent meetings to ensure some geographical distribution over time. ACL-91 is scheduled for Berkeley, California, and ACL-92 for Newark, Delaware, so ACL-93 should be midwest or western in location.
   16. Availability of facilities in June/July time frame; consideration of quarter or semester break schedule may be relevant.
   17. Proximity to related meetings that can serve to encourage attendance; usually only of incidental interest.