EACL 2012: CALL FOR BIDS The European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL) hereby invites proposals to host the conference of the European Chapter of ACL in 2012. This conference takes place every 3 years. The conference in 2012 will be the 13th meeting of the EACL. 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 on which basis the final selection will be made. The EACL Board will select the general chair for the conference, the programme committee chair, and all other chairs (e.g., tutorial chair, workshop chair, etc.) except for 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, accommodation, on-site registration, participant internet access, security for equipment, the reception, the banquet, and working with the other chairs and the EACL Board to develop the budget and registration materials. Achieving budget estimates will, in particular, involve liaising with the sponsorship committee. The conference should take place during April 2012, avoiding national holidays of the EACL countries (in 2012, western Easter is April 6-9, orthodox Easter is April 13-15, Jewish passover is April 7-14). Draft proposals should include information on (we require that each item is explicitly addressed): Location (accessibility; conference venue, e.g., hotel or university; accommodations, e.g., hotels, motels, student dorms; dining options) Proposed dates Local Arrangements team (chair/co-chair, committee, volunteer labour, registration handling) Local Computational Linguistics community Meeting venues: space for plenary sessions including 4 conference rooms hosting respectively 500, 250, 250 and 100 person; a poster or exhibit room; 11 rooms on the workshops/tutorials days among which one hosts 200 person and the others 60 persons; and rooms for demos, small meetings and registration High-speed desktop and wireless Internet access Audiovisual equipment Printing of conference booklet and tutorial notes Food and catering including breaks, receptions and banquet Social events including infrastructure for banquets and receptions Sponsorships Budget estimates spreadsheet (template provided, linked from the Bid Guidelines) Registration and payment procedure Opportunities for co-location with other meetings. Proposals will be evaluated in relation to a number of site selection criteria (unordered): Adequacy of conference and exhibit facilities for the anticipated number of registrants Adequacy of residence accommodations and food services in range of price categories and close to the conference facilities Adequacy of budget projections and expected surplus Appropriateness of proposed dates Geographical and national balance with regard to previous EACL and ACL conferences held in Europe and other major Natural Language Processing conferences held in this continent Experience of local arrangements team Local CL community support Local government and industry support Reasonableness of expected registration fees Accessibility and attractiveness of proposed site. The ACL conference handbook and more about ACL policies can be found at: http://www.aclweb.org/archive. Successful bids for previous and current conferences will be made available at: http://eacl.coli.uni-saarland.de/ Please send your draft proposal (including template form with estimated budget) electronically to the EACL Chair-elect: Marie-Francine Moens Department of Computer Science Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Celestijnenlaan 200A B-3001 Heverlee, Belgium tel: 32 16 32 53 83 fax: 32 16 32 79 96 sien moens at cs dot kuleuven dot be You can attach your draft proposal as a pdf attachment to your email. Important Dates: March 11, 2009: Publication of call for bids September 11, 2009: Deadline for draft bids November 12, 2009: Feedback to bidders and announcement of shortlist of bidders January 22, 2010: Deadline for final bids March 26, 2010: Final bid chosen April, 2012: EACL Conference.