The Association for Computational Linguistics invites proposals to host the 48th Annual Meeting of the ACL, to be held in Europe in June or July, 2010.
At this time, we seek draft proposals from prospective bidders. Based on an evaluation of the draft proposals, promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information for the final selection process.
The ACL-2010 Coordinating Committee, made up of executive committee members from the ACL together with its European chapter (EACL), will select the General Chair, Program Committee Co-Chairs and all other chairs for the conference, including Sponsorship Chair, Tutorial Chair, Demo Chair, Publications Chair, and Student Research Workshop Co-Chairs.
Draft proposals should identify a Local Arrangements Chair, who will be responsible for arranging meeting rooms, equipment, security for equipment, refreshments, housing, on-site registration, participant e-mail access, the reception, the banquet, and working with the General Chair and the Coordinating Committee to develop the budget and registration materials.
Instructions
Draft proposals should include information on:
- Location (accessibility; conference venue, e.g., hotel or university; accommodation, e.g., hotels, motels, student housing)
- Proposed dates
- Local Arrangements team (chair/co-chair, committee, volunteer labor, registration handling; describing any experience the team has had in organizing previous conferences)
- Local Computational Linguistics community
- Meeting venues (space for plenary sessions, tutorials, workshops, posters, exhibits, demos and small meetings)
- High speed, all-ports-open, easy-to-use internet access for participants
- Audiovisual equipment
- Catering, including receptions, banquet, and entertainment
- Local sponsorships
- Budget estimates (NB ACL provides a standard spreadsheet for this, and bidders only provide estimates on local items such as cost of the room hire and wifi access; obtain this from Steven Bird, and complete it as part of the submission)
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
- Appropriateness 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
- Reasonableness of expected registration fees
- Adequacy of budget projections and expected surplus, and use of ACL's budget spreadsheet
- Geographical and national balance with regard to meetings in the decade prior to 2010: Saarbruecken (Coling 2000), Toulouse (ACL 2001), Budapest (EACL 2003), Geneva (Coling 2004), Barcelona (ACL 2004), Trento (EACL 2006), Prague (ACL 2007), Manchester (Coling 2008), Athens (EACL 2009)
Information about ACL, its policies and the ACL conference handbook may be found at: http://newsite.aclweb.org/policies.
Successful sample bids for previous conferences may be found at: http://www.aclweb.org/archive/bids.html. If you have any queries about drafting your bid please contact Steven Bird.
Important Dates
June 23, 2007 Call for Bids Posted
February 15, 2008 Draft proposals due
March 14, 2008 Committee provides feedback to bidders
April 18, 2008 Bidders provide any requested information
May 16, 2008 Bid selected
Please send draft proposals to:
Assoc Prof Steven Bird
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering
University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
Email: sb [at] csse.unimelb.edu.au
Phone: +61 3 8344-1361
Fax: +61 3 9348-1184
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