Call for Bids: ACL 2017 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics

Call for Bids: ACL 2017 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics

The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) invites proposals to host the 55th Annual Meeting of the ACL, to be held in the Americas in June, July, or August 2017.

At this time, we seek preliminary draft proposals from prospective bidders in the Americas. Promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information for the final selection.

The ACL 2017 Coordinating Committee, made up of members of the Executive Committee of the ACL and NAACL, will select the General Chair and the Program Committee Co-Chairs for the conference. Draft proposals should identify a Local Arrangements Chair and likely Local Committee members, who will work with the General Chair and the Coordinating Committee to develop a detailed plan and budget.

To facilitate conference organization, bidders may delegate many tasks of their choice to a Professional Conference Organizer and/or to the ACL Office (Priscilla Rasmussen). Handy bid guidelines, including expense and task list templates and additional useful links are provided at: http://aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=Bid_Guidelines . The template for local expenses is available here: http://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/gh/ACL-conference-bid-template-Rev-2014-06...

*Bid Highlights*: Draft proposals should include information on the following:

- Location (accessibility; conference venue, e.g., hotel or university; accommodation; dining options, both for lunches and dinner)
- Proposed dates. Religious and local national holidays should be avoided, as much as possible.
- Local arrangements team (chair/co-chair, committee, volunteer labor, registration handling if not to be done by the ACL Office; describing any experience the team has had in organizing previous conferences and the number of participants at those conferences)
- Local Computational Linguistics community
- Meeting venues (rooms and capacity for main sessions, tutorials, workshops, posters, exhibits, demos, small meetings and registration/storage)
- High-speed, all-ports-open, reliable easy-to-use internet access for at least 1000 simultaneous users
- Audiovisual equipment
- Catering, including breaks, poster sessions, receptions, ticketed banquet and entertainment (traditionally, dancing for participants at the banquet)
- Potential Local sponsorships
- Local expenses estimates spreadsheet (using the template provided, link above)

*Evaluation*:

Proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria (unordered):

- Experience of local arrangements team
- Local CL community support
- Local government and industry support
- Accessibility and attractiveness of proposed site
- Suitability of proposed dates
- Adequacy of conference and exhibit facilities for the anticipated number of
registrants
- Adequacy of residence accommodations and food services in a range of price
categories and close to the conference facilities
- Adequacy of expense projections
- Geographical balance with regard to ACL meetings in the Americas in the
decade prior to 2017 (ACL 2008 Columbus, Ohio; ACL 2011 Portland, Oregon; ACL 2014 Baltimore, Maryland)

*Important Dates*:

November 1, 2014 - Final Call for Bids
January 15, 2015 - Notify intention to submit proposal
March 1, 2015 - Draft proposals due
Through March, 2015 - Feedback to bidders
Apr 15, 2015 - Final bids due
May 15, 2015 - Bid selected

The selected location for ACL 2017 will be announced at the ACL 2015
conference (Beijing, China).

For any queries please contact Pushpak Bhattacharyya, the Coordinating
Committee chair. Please send notifications and draft proposals to:

Pushpak Bhattacharyya

Pushpak Bhattacharyya
Dept of Computer Science and Engg,
IIT Bombay,
Powai,
Mumbai 400 076,
India.