Absent with Apologies: Rajeev SANGAL, Junichi TSUJII
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MINUTES
The 7th ACL Board Meeting, @ACL-IJCNLP2015, VIP Room 3-2, China National Convention Centre (CNCC), 13:30pm, July 28 2015.
Present: Francis BOND (Secretary, FB), Jing-Shia CHANG (JSC), Key-Sun CHOI (KSC), Gary Geunbae LEE (GL), Yuji MATSUMOTO (YM), Jungyun SEO (JS), Keh-Yih SU (KYS), Benjamin TSOU (BT), Haifeng WANG (HW), Kam-Fai WONG (Chair. KFW), Min ZHANG (MZ), Chengqing ZONG (CZ)
Absent with apologies: Rajeev SANGAL, Junichi TSUJII
1. Meeting began at1345h.
2. KFW and FB apologized for lateness of sending information and the call for meeting.
3. KFW explained the background of AFNLP
4. The following Agenda was approved without modification:
AGENDA 0. Approve agenda 1. Self-Introduction 2. Chairman Message 3. Financial Report 4. Endorse result of election 5. Report from representatives 6. Report of Asian Linguistic Resources initiative (K.S.Choi) 7. Report of Call For Bid to host IJCNLP2017 (CCC Chair) 8. Report of AFNLP Publicity and Communications 9. Call for proposals - Stronger link with ACL, ACL16 Student Workshop - Scholarship and Awards - Summer School 10. A.O.B.
5. Attendants introduced themselves: Francis BOND Outgoing secretary,
Jing-Shia CHANG Representative, Taiwan
Key-Sun CHOI Past Prsident (2009-2010)
Gary Geunbae LEE Representative, Korea Yuji MATSUMOTO Immediate Past President; cum General Chair ACL-IJCNLP2015
Jungyun SEO Representative, Korea
Keh-Yih SU Past President (2011-2012)
Benjamin TSOU Founding President
Haifeng WANG AFNLP Liaison Officer in ACL
Kam-Fai WONG , President (2015-2016)
Min ZHANG Representative, Singapore; cum Chair of CLC
Chengqing ZONG Secretary General (2015-2016), AFNLP
6. Chairman Message:
a. Asian NLP Expert List has been compiled with more than 130 entries
b. List of conferences in Asia 2016 has been compiled (see Appendix V)
c. Support NLP&CC2015, Nancheng, and BigComp2015, Hong Kong
d. AFNLP nomination the following members to ACL Exec for the ACL2018 Coordinating Committee: Pascale Fung (HK), Haizhou Li (SG), Yuji Matsumoto (JP), Jong Park (KR)
e. Letter from the President has been distributed to all members and leaders of other professional associations, eg ACL, ACM, IEEE-CS, etc., in June
f. AFNP President Summit, was held in June 13-14 2015, Hong Kong
7. KFW thanked YM in chairing ACL-IJCNLP2015 as part of his leadership for AFNLP. Report of ACL-IJCNLP 2015 by YM is as follows:
a. one chair from the local region one from international
b. new mentoring system (that seems to be working well)
c. very good work from the sponsoring chairs (6 platinum!) d. 1,300 submissions (record) 173 long; 145? short: ** so many posters, presidential address in the morning
e. in the future we should have an address from the AFNLP president in joint conferences
f. will try to add a short address from the president in closing
g. since KFW cannot be there YM will represent AFNLP at closing
8. KFW nominated to ACL Exec the following people to join the ACL 2018 coordinating committee which consist of 5 members from ACL and 4 for AFNLP
Pascale Fung, HKUST, Hong Kong (Program Chair ACL2013)
Haizhou LI, I2R, Singapore (General Chair, ACL2012; Local Arrangement Chair, ACL-IJCNLP09 )
Yuji Matsumoto, NIST, Japan (General Chair, ACL-IJCNLP 2015)
Jong Park, KAIST, Korea (Local Arrangement Chair, ACL 2012; PC Chair IJCNLP13)
Remarks:
KFW explained the selection criteria were mainly based on (i) Asian from different economies, (ii) rich experience in conference organization and (iii) not intend to bid.
KYS pointed out that these positions were usually taken by President; VP; Secretary; and Treasurer. KFW responded that he was not aware of that and requested the Secretary to formalize it in AFNLP documents.
[Action 1: Secretary to formalize membership for future ACL conference coordinating committee in AFNLP document.]
CZ raised the concern that there was no representative who supported the interests of Mainland China, and were major participants in these conferences.
YM reminded everyone that the discussion had started and it would be impossible to retract. 9. KFW reported the present and past presidents have met in Hong Kong, June 13-14 2015, for strategic planning of AFNLP. Notes of the meeting are attached (see Appendix I). There were three strategic items suggested for the coming years, namely (1) Newsletter to increase inter- and intra AFNLP communications; (2) Asian linguistic resources, in particular resources for minority communities; and (3) scholarship, awards and summer schools.
10. KFW reported that the AFNLP account is currently hosted by The Chinese University of Hong Kong and he was in the process of transferring the account to COLIPS, Singapore. Haizhou is helping in the receiving end.
11. KFW proposed to set aside US$10,000 each year for scholarship to help needed students to attend international conferences. Also, AFNLP could establish best student Asian paper awards in different conferences.
12. AFNLP election, which should be completed in January 2015, has been delayed until July 2015. Members endorsed the election results as listed in Appendix II.
13. Reports from representatives:
ACL (HW):
o ACL meeting was the main thing that happened
o AFNLP needs a better channel of communication to ACL. Suggestions: ** Liaison Officer emails president/secretary to get the information for ACL liaison ** extract information from the newsletter (CLC chair)
Korea (GL):
o no major conference
o knowledge based questions answering (OKQB 2015 in August)
Singapore, COLIPS (MZ for Haizhou Li): o 2014 conference in Kuching; in Socheow in October 2015
o COLIPS hosts the AFNLP website, is happy to keep doing it
o COLIPS is happy to host IJCNLP 2017 (there will be a bid); but is prepared to step back if another region bids
o COLIPS is ready to manage AFNLP account and await fund transfer from HK
Japan (YM):
o annual meeting was held successfully each year
o joint meeting Japan/China (in Aomori: chaired by Isahara Satoshi)
o Coling 2016, Osaka
China (CZ):
o Many activities. Activity list is available from CIPS
o [Post Meeting note] Suggest to invite Le SUN to join AFNLP as member-at-large
[Action 2: Invite SUN Le as Member-At-Large (KFW)]
ROCLING, Taiwan (JSC):
o ROCLING holds annual meeting and published a journal
o ROCLING has 800 members
o Organized Date Processing; Speech and Signal Processing workshop
o Also support SIGIR and Data Science workshop
Other reports:
o AIRS2015, Brisbane, Australia
o PACLIC2015, Phuket, Thailand and PACLIC2016, Shanghai, China
o PACLING2015, Bali, Indonesia
o BT suggested that AFNLP should link closer to PACLIC and perhaps PACLING can co-locate with IJCNLP2017
[Action 3: Explore PACLING-IJCNLP-2017 co-location (CCC, AFNLP)] 14. Asian resource initiatives. KSC reported that:
He represented AFNLP to express interest of organizing LREC2018 in Asia and Nicoletta would discuss with ELRA for the possibility. KF mentioned that Hainan and Macau were good locations for this purpose.
He spoke to ISO/TC37/SC4 and they welcome AFNLP to join as an institutional member.
[Post-meeting note] Koiti Hasida, the newly elected ALC chair, was recommended to serve as the AFNLP liaison officer in ISO/TC37/SC4 committee
[Action 4: Send a letter to KSC, who will forward it to Write to Mercè FERRES
15. The call for bid to host IJCNLP2017 has been distributed (see Appendix III).
16. “Publicity and Communications” has been identified as the highest priority action item in the President Summit. AFNLP has distributed the “Letter from the President” (see Appendix IV) in July 4, 2015 which served as the 2015 Q3 newsletter. KFW will work closely with MZ on the Q4 newsletter and invited members for submissions.
[Action 5: AFNLP 2015Q4 Newsletter (ZM/KFW)]
17. KFW reported that AFNLP was a supporting association of NLPCC2015, Nancheng China, October 2015, and BigComp2016, Hong Kong, January 2016. One AFNLP Best Asian Paper Award would be offered to each of these conferences. The award amount is US$500 + exchange rates.
18. Members agreed to establish a regular Asian Best Student Paper Award with ACL Student Workshop. Also, ACL invited AFNLP for 2 nominations of Faculty Advisor for ACL2016 Student Workshop. Liu Yang (China), Jong Park (Korea), Seung-Won Hwang (Korea), Tim Baldwin (Australia) and Olivia Kwong (Hong Kong) were proposed. KFW will invite them in that order. Also, this task will be included as part of the work of AFNLP liaison officer in ACL, who is currently HW.
[Action 6: KFW invite the proposed AFNLP members as Faculty Advisor of ACL2016 Student Workshop and pass the 2 names to HW. (KFW)]
[Action 7: HW will be the liaison of this matter with ACL Exec. He will also work out how AFNLP Asian Student Scholarship could be setup. (HW)]
19. In the President Summit, it was suggested that AFNLP should organize summer schools and the first attempt would be China. CZ and HW opined that the idea of AFNLP summer schools is not attractive in China as there were too many. KYS suggested we could consider establishing a AFNLP distinguished speaker program and invite renowned NLP researchers to Asia to deliver lectures in special topics.
20. There remained no other business and the meeting was adjourned in 1645h.
Action Items
[Action 1: Secretary to formalize membership for future ACL conference coordinating committee in AFNLP document (FB)]
[Action 2: Invite SUN Le as Member-At-Large (KFW)]
[Action 3: Explore PACLING-IJCNLP-2017 co-location (CCC, AFNLP)]
[Action 4: Send a letter to KSC, who will forward it to Write to Mercè FERRES
[Action 5: AFNLP 2015Q4 Newsletter (ZM/KFW)]
[Action 6: KFW invite the proposed AFNLP members as Faculty Advisor of ACL2016 Student Workshop and pass the 2 names to HW. (KFW)]
[Action 7: HW will be the liaison of this matter with ACL Exec. He will also work out how AFNLP Asian Student Scholarship could be setup. (HW)]
Appendix I: Notes of President Summit
(A) Election
(1) Election was due in Jan 2015 (see Appendix A). No action taken. Perhaps we the election. Since Francis is not responding we ask Haizhou to conduct it. We need to find out the eligible voters. All participants of previous 2 IJCNLP conferences (refer to constitution) are eligible.
Action: hjli to conduct election. Remind hjli to find out the list of eligible voters.
Action: Transition will take in ACL/IJCNLP2015, Beijing.
(2) Website update is the job of the Communication and Liaison Committee (CLC) Chair. Currently Park.
Action: Do this after election, ie after (1).
(3) Need AFNLP circulation. This is the job of CLC Chair. We can use the AFNLP expert list
Action: Before the election, KF will do circulation. CLC Chair will pick up the task after election.
(B) Identity of AFNLP
(4) Strengthen links with ACL.
(i) ACL-IJCNLP2015: Observation: Involvement level of AFNLP in ACL-IJCNLP2015 organization is low. Currently, we have
a. financial splitting
b. Asian expert list submitted to them
c. ACL-IJCNLP2015 have a joint conference cordinating committee
d. Approval of functional co-chairs (1 IJCNLP and 1 ACL)
Most functional co-chairs are split except publication chairs.
a1) Not announced to AFNLP. (can be improcve)
e. Workshop organisation
a2) We did not. Could have ask more Asian researchers (in particular AFNLP-SIGs) to propose.
Action: see a1, a2
(ii) Planning for ACL-AFNLP2018. Pascale, Jong Park, Tsujii-san and Haizhou Li.
(iii) CFP for IJCNLP2017 in ACL-IJCNLP2015 (VP AFNLP is charge, KF) (5) More IJCNLP SIGs activities, eg organization of workshops. Problem: no SIG management.
Action: Create SIG Manager. This should be assigned by the President.
Action: In fact, the President should assign duties to each Exco members, including SIG management, Membership, Newsletter content, events (future conferences) and collaboration with Asian conferences, education (AFNLP School), etc.
(6) Rasise awareness of AFNLP through broader AFNLP publication, eg newsletters. CLC not active. Need to promote more to young researchers. [1]
Action: Chase after CLC chair for following the job spec, in particular the newsletters and website.
Action: Form 2 mailing lists, one from past IJCNLP conferences (the voting list) and second others (the outreach list; can do it distributedly through country coordinators). Suggested champion is Jong Park (Park), others: Pushpak, Min Zhang, Japanese assocation of NLP.
Action: Need good content, eg reports of different conferences. Form a newsletter committee chaired by an exec member (different CLC).
(7) Promote Asian resources helps increase influence of AFNLP. Existing ARC committee chairs are not very active. ARC can work on eg ISO standards, benchmarks, etc. [3]
Action: We need a champion. KS Choi will volunteer. Choi will work out a strategic plan. Can
Action: Increase the activity level of ARC, especially international connections. May need more members in ARC.
(8) Education: AFNLP school [2]
Action: Establish Annual AFNLP School. Call For AFNLP School proposal.
Action: For the first time, try China. KF and Benjamin will take the lead.
(9) Other Asian conferences (see Appendix B). Observations: AFNLP seems to lose connect with them. Each conference coordinator should send report to AFNLP.
Action: Re-connect with old ones and connect with new ones.
(C) Financial Matter
(10) How to spend? Action: Transfer money to COLIPS [KF to HJLI]
Action: Pay COLIPS for newsletter and website admin [HJLI]
Action: HK$100k for School organization
Action: AFNLP Best Paper Award in COLING2016 (US$500), COLING picks.
[Note: criteria: offer best paper award sponsorship to big international conference in Asia.]
(11) More AFNLP activities. Without that no-one is aware of AFNLP.
(12)AFNLP member portal. Need security. Appendix II: Report on Election Result
Election Start: July 2, 2015 (Office Bearers), July 5, 2015 (Members-At-Large)
Election End: July 9, 2015, (Office Bearers), July 18, 2015 (Members-At-Large)
Election Result: July 24, 2015 (Both)
Vice President: • Haizhou Li: 7 • Virach Sornlertlamvanich: 3
Secretary: • Chengqing Zong: 7 • Hsin-His Chen: 4
Honorary Treasurer: • Satoshi Sekine: 7 • Tim Baldwin: 4
Chair of ALR: • Francis Bond: 4 • Koiti Hasida: 7
Chair of CLC: • Min Zhang: 6 • Naoaki Okazaki: 4
Members-at-large: (Number of voters: 70) • Seung-Won Hwang : 27 • Pushpak Bhattacharyya : 27 • Hitoshi Nishikawa : 20 • Tiejun Zhao : 22 • Miyao Yusuke : 25 • Lun-Wei Ku : 24 Appendix III: Call For Bid to host IJCNLP2017
Call for Bids to Host
The 8th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (IJCNLP-2017)
Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing (AFNLP) hereby invites proposals to host IJCNLP-2017. This conference will be the 8th bi-annual flagship conference organized by AFNLP. Previous conferences are held in Sanya, China (AFNLP2004), Jeju, Korea (IJCNLP2005), Hyderabad, India (IJCNLP2008), Singapore (ACL-IJCNLP2009), Cheng Mei, Thailand (IJCNLP2011), Nagoya, Japan (IJCNLP2013) and Beijing, China (ACL-IJCNLP2015).
At this time, we seek draft proposals from prospective bidders. Based on an evaluation of the draft proposals received, promising bidders will be asked to provide additional information as needed for the final selection.
The AFNLP Executive Committees will select the General Chair, Program Committee Co-Chairs and all other Chairs for the conference (e.g., Tutorial Chair, Demo Chair, Publications Chair, Student Co-Chairs), except the Local Arrangements Chair.
Draft proposals should identify a Local Arrangements Chair, who will be responsible for activities such as arranging meeting rooms, equipment, refreshments, housing, on-site registration, participant e-mail access, security for equipment, the reception, the banquet, and working with the General Chair and the AFNLP Executive Committee to develop the budget and registration materials.
Draft proposals are due on August 14, 2015. They will be evaluated by the AFNLP Executive Committee by September 11, 2015. Promising bidders will then be contacted and asked to provide further information due by September 30, 2015. The final bid will be chosen by October 16, 2015.
The conference should take place in October-December 2017.
Draft proposals should include information:
Location (accessibility; conference venue, e.g., hotel or university; accommodations, e.g., hotels, motels, student housing)
Proposed dates
Local Arrangements team (chair/co-chair, committee, volunteer labor, registration handling)
Local Computational Linguistics community (if any)
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.
A/V equipment
Food/entertainment/banquet/receptions
Sponsorships
Budget estimates Estimated number of participants from the local community (with some evidential information, e.g., the number of the local academic associations)
Proposals will be evaluated in relation to a number of site selection 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
Information about AFNLP and past IJCNLP conferences can be found at http://www.afnlp.org
Please send draft proposals electronically to:
Professor Kam-Fai Wong
Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, N.T.
Hong Kong.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +852 3943 8220 Fax: +852 2603 7557
Important Dates:
July, 2015: Call for Bids Posted
August 14, 2015: Draft proposals due
September 11, 2015: Feedbacks from AFNLP September 30, 2015: Promising bidders provide requested information
October 16, 2015: Bid selected
Appendix IV
Letter from the President (2015-2016)
July, 4 2015, Hong Kong
Dear AFNLP Members,
To begin, I would like to send you my warmest regards. I am your President for the next two years, 2015-2016. I am writing to inform you what I have achieved in the first 6 months of my term and my plan for Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing (hereafter abbreviated as AFNLP) in the coming months.
Some of you may feel surprise to receive this letter and wonder why you are an AFNLP member. The answer is simple --- AFNLP individual membership network is comprised of institutional members and individual members. The former member class are representatives drawn from (a) International organization or its chapter/branch; (b) International conference; (c) Regional organization; or(d) Regional representative, endorsed by the Federation; as well as Members-at-Large in the AFNLP Executive Committee. Individual members are mainly drawn from participants in the last meeting of the conferences supported by AFNLP, which in particular include the Federation own bi-annual conference, namely the International Joint Conference of Natural Language Processing (IJCNLP) in Nagoya, Japan (2013). At present, we have some 630 members worldwide.
AFNLP was founded in 2003 by a group of active NLP scientists and technologists in different Asian and Australian economies. The mission of the AFNLP is to promote and enhance research and development relating to the computational analysis and the automatic processing of all languages of importance to the Asian region without regard to differences in race, gender, language, religious belief or political stand, by assisting and supporting like-minded organizations and institutions through information sharing, conference organization, research and publication coordination, and other forms of support in consonance with the mission of AFNLP. In this front, I have in the first 6 months of my term completed (or am continuing working on) the following tasks: 1. Joint conference with ACL, ie ACL-IJCNLP2015, July 26-31 2015, Beijing, China and our immediate past President (2013- 2014), Professor Yuji Matsumoto, Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), Japan, is the General Chair of the conference. AFNLP has been providing Professor Matsumoto all possible support. In fact, joint conference organization with ACL takes place every 6 years since the first one in Singapore (2009). 2. Keep abreast of the global development of NLP research through our close connection with ACL. We have nominated Dr. Haifeng Wang, Vice President, Baidu Inc., to serve as AFNLP Liaison officer in the ACL EXECutive committee. This liaison arrangement is bi-directional. Through it we would like ACL (and the international NLP community at-large) to appreciate the work of AFNLP; and in the other direction, for us to keep up to date the work of ACL and other related international NLP related events. Also, Professor Pushpak Bhattacharyya, IIT Bombay, India, is the ACL counterpart sitting in the AFNLP executive committee. 3. Active Asia NLP Researcher Database. We have compiled the latest Database in March with over 130 expert entries drawn from nominations made by members of the executive committee. The Database has been shared with the organizers of conferences such as ACL-IJCNLP2015 (Beijing), NLPCC2015 (Nancheng) and BigComp2016 (Hong Kong) for them to select Asian NLP researchers as candidates of functional chairs, PC members, reviewers, etc. This is an open database for NLP research communities worldwide. If any members are interested in it, please do not hesitate to contact me. 4. Call for bid to host IJCNLP2017. The Call has been distributed to all members inviting them to submit proposals. The submission deadline is August 14 2015 and notification October 16 2015. 5. AFNLP President Summit. The Summit with the presence of all the past presidents, including professors Benjamin Tsou (Hong Kong), Jun’ichi Tsujii (Japan), Key-Sun Choi (Korea), Keh-Yih Su (Taiwan), Yuji Matsumoto (Japan) and myself (Kam-Fai Wong, Hong Kong, the host), was successfully held in The Chinese University of Hong Kong, June 13, 2015. The objective of the Summit is to plan forward for AFNLP.
I am glad to meet with the past presidents in the AFNLP President Summit. We had a very fruitful meeting. We have revisited AFNLP mission and confirm its importance to the Asian NLP communities. Following our objectives of “assisting and supporting like-minded organizations and institutions through information sharing, conference organization, research and publication coordination, and other forms of support in consonance with the mission of AFNLP” and based on our assessment of our volunteer capacity, we have plans to (a) enhance communications of the Federation through our website and quarterly newsletters, (b) put more emphasis on our work in Asian Linguistic Resources; (c) organize annual AFNLP schools in different economies and invite prominent international NLP experts to teach; and (d) establish a AFNLP award fund to support meaningful international NLP activities, e.g. there will be a AFNLP Best Paper Award for COLING2016, Japan. There are plenty work behind these tasks and like any not-for-profit associations, AFNLP is always looking for volunteers. Currently AFNLP has the Conference Coordination Committee (CCC, chaired by the Vice President), Asian Language Resources Committee (ALRC), Communication and Liaison Committee (CLC), and Nominations and Constitutional Affairs Committee (NCAC). We do need help in all of them, please send me an email if you would like to participate. Last but not least, may I remind you once again that our next bi-annual meeting is just round the corner. This year we are jointly organizing it with ACL. ACL-IJCNLP2015 will be held in Beijing, July 26-31 2015. I hope you will participate. When you are there, please do not hesitate to stop me for a chat and share with me your ideas for the betterment of Asian NLP communities.
I am looking forward to meeting you soon. In the mean time, should you have any good suggestions for AFNLP, please drop me a line.
Yours, Kam-Fai Wong, President (2015-2016) Appendix V: List of NLP related Conferences
Conference Submission Date Notification Date Conference Date Location KICSS2015 July 31, 2015 Sept 10, 2015 Nov 12-14, 2015 Phuket, Thailand AIRS 2015 Jul 19, 2015 Aug 28, 15 Dec 2-4, 2015 Brisbane, Australia AAAI 2016 Sep 10, 2015 Nov 12, 2015 Feb 12-17, 2016 Phoenix, AZ, USA ECIR 2016 Oct 9, 2015 Dec 4, 2015 Jan 11, 2016 Padua, Italy LREC 2016 Oct 15, 2015 TBD May 23-28, 2016 Portoroz, Slovenia CICLing 2016 TBD TBD Apr 3-9, 2016 Konya, Turley NAACL 2016 Jan 6, 2016 Mar 2, 2016 Jun 12-17, 2016 San Diego, USA ACL 2016 TBD TBD Aug 07-12, 2016 Berlin, Germany COLING 2016 TBD TBD TBD Osaka, Japan EMNLP 2016 TBD TBD TBD Austin, TX, USA SIGIR 2016 TBD TBD Jul 17-21, 2016 Pisa, Italy