Call for Bids to Host NAACL HLT 2009

The North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL) invites proposals to host the NAACL Human Language Technology (HLT) conference in the Americas in 2009.

Hosting NAACL HLT is Important!

HLT is a major conference that covers the areas of computational linguistics and natural language processing, speech processing, and information retrieval. The HLT conference is organized by the elected members of the NAACL board, with advice from a board of representatives of the speech and IR communities, the commercial world, and funding agencies. NAACL HLT 2009 will take place in May or June 2009. (Note that the ACL conference will take place in Asia that year, most likely in August.)

Hosting NAACL HLT is Fun and Rewarding!

It is fun to host a conference: you don't have to travel, and can sleep in your own bed.
You can showcase research at your institution.
Your institution becomes better known as a premier place for research in natural language processing, speech processing, and/or information retrieval.
More students at your institution can attend at no cost to you (for free through the student helper program).

Hosting NAACL HLT is Straightforward!

You can inspect a list of tasks related to hosting an HLT conference here. As you can see, you can choose to perform more or fewer tasks, with the NAACL business manager, Priscilla Rasmussen, and/or possibly a professional conference organizer (perhaps one provided by your university) taking on tasks you would rather not. The amount of financial support from NAACL for administrative tasks and (to some extent) how prominently your contributions are acknowledged depend on how many tasks you choose to perform. There is a tailor-made plan to suit your needs!

All you need is a suitable venue along with hotel rooms and student housing (this can simply be a cheaper hotel). The venue can be a hotel, a convention center, or a university. You will need at least four rooms, the largest one holding at least 600 people. You will need to have at least 300 hotel rooms and 100 rooms for students per night.

Bidding to Host NAACL HLT is Easy!

We have streamlined the bidding process. We will need from you the following pieces of information:

Who are you? Tell us the local organizing chair, other members of the committee, and their institutions. Also tell us something about the local HLT community.
What is the proposed venue?

Where will the conference take place?

What hotels will be used? Are they close to the conference site?
What facilities for cheaper student housing are available? Are they close to the conference site?
What about internet access for the participants and the program at the conference venue?

What are your proposed dates (in the May-June 2009 time frame)? Note that you should make sure your proposed venue and hotel rooms are available then.
Where will the banquet take place? Who will cater the welcoming reception and the breaks at the conference? Where will the welcoming reception take place?
Which tasks do you want to perform, and who will perform the other tasks? For this purpose, we provide a spreadsheet with all the tasks involved in organizing the conference. You will see three options, Options A, B, and C. Option A represents the maximum amount of work for the local organizers, while Option C is the least amount of work. B is in between. Please simply let us know which of these three models would work best for you. The precise details of who does what will be further discussed with the successful bidder, you are not committing to specific tasks at this point. The spreadsheet is linked from the section just above this one.
What will be some of the expenses? We provide a spreadsheet which tells you exactly what information you need to supply. You enter the numbers right into the spreadsheet and email it to us. You can download the budget spreadsheet here.

The criteria we use in choosing a host include the following (in no particular order):

Experience of local arrangements team
Local HLT community 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 expenses overall
Geographical and national balance with regard to the previous or currently planned conferences (New York City in 2006, Rochester in 2007, Columbus in 2008).

The deadlines and process for the selection of the site for NAACL HLT 2009 follow:

April 2, 2007	This call for Bids Posted
May 31, 2007	Initial bids due
By June 15, 2007	Promising bidders are requested to provide more information
Late July 2007	Site visit by NAACL representatives
August 2007	Decision made by NAACL Board
September 2007	NAACL Board chooses General Chair for conference, as well as program committee co-chairs

Successful sample bids for previous conferences may be found at: http://www.aclweb.org/archive/bids.html.

Please send your bids (i.e., a document answering our questions, as well as the budget spread sheet filled out) to Jennifer Chu-Carroll (jencc@us.ibm.com). Also send any other questions to the same email address.