The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) invites proposals to host the 54th Annual Meeting of the ACL, to be held in Europe, the Middle East or Africa (EMEA) in June, July, or August 2016.
At this time, we seek preliminary draft proposals from prospective bidders in EMEA. Promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information for the final selection.
The ACL 2016 Coordinating Committee, made up of members of the Executive Committee of the ACL and representatives of European Chapter of the ACL (EACL), will select the General Chair and the Program Committee Co-Chairs for the conference. Draft proposals should identify a Local Arrangements Chair, 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-2013-07...
Bid Highlights: Draft proposals should include information on the following:
- Location (accessibility; conference venue, e.g., hotel or university; accommodation; dining options)
- 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; 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 (space for sessions, tutorials, workshops, posters, exhibits, demos, small meetings and registration)
- High-speed, all-ports-open, easy-to-use internet access
- Audiovisual equipment
- Catering, including breaks, receptions, banquet and entertainment (traditionally, dancing for participants at the banquet)
- 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 EMEA in the decade prior to 2016 (ACL 2007 Prague, ACL 2010
Important Dates:
December 1, 2013 - Final Call for Bids
January 15, 2014 - Notify intention to submit proposal
March 1, 2014 - Draft proposals due
Through March, 2014 - Feedback to bidders
Apr 15, 2014 - Final bids due
May 15, 2014 - Bid selected
The selected location for ACL 2016 will be announced at the ACL 2014 conference (Baltimore, USA, June 22-27, 2014).
Anyone potentially interested in bidding is encouraged to get in contact with Christopher Manning, the Coordinating Committee chair. Please send notifications and draft proposals to:
Christopher Manning: manning [at] stanford.edu .
Christopher Manning
Dept of Computer Sciences, Gates 1A
353 Serra Mall
Stanford CA 94305-9010
USA