Publicity and Social Media Chair Handbook

Current Chairs:

Name Affiliation Contact
Anette Frank Heidelberg University frank@cl.uni-heidelberg.de
Shruti Rijhwani Google DeepMind shrutirijhwani@gmail.com
Horacio SaggionHoracio Saggion Pompeu Fabra University horacio.saggion@upf.edu

Overview of Responsibilities

The Publicity and Social Media Chairs at CL conferences are responsible for promoting the conference through various online and in-person methods, including "live-tweeting", posting updates, and attracting attention from the Press. *At some conferences there maybe a dedicated Social Media chair. If not, the Publicity chair will also be responsible for promoting the conference on social media platforms.\

The following are the main responsibilities of the Publicity Chairs:

1. Cross-Committee Coordination\ 2. Disseminating Conference Information\ 3. During-Conference Activities\ 4. Press/Media Interaction

General Notes: * The Publicity Chair should work alongside the General Chairs, Local Chairs, Website Chairs, and Program Chairs, where appropriate. * Publicity can be gained through contacting the following (non-exhaustive): Connectionist, Corpora, Linguist List, ML News, MT List, Omid's NLP Conference Calendar, SemEval, special interest groups (SIGs), and regional NLP groups (e.g., AFNLP and ALTA)

Breakdown of Responsibilities

1. Cross-Committee Coordination

This responsibility concerns cooperating with previous chairs to obtain all necessary information for a smooth handover.

Task Start Deadline Dependency Notes
Contact Previous Year's Chairs ASAP July 2024 - -
Organize ACL Account Access Transfers ASAP Sep 2024 - This is particularly relevant for transferring access of relevant social accounts.
Confirm Account Transfers Sep 2024 Sep 2024 - This should include relevant permissions to post to mailing lists and ACL Portals.
Create Shared Document for All Chairs to Requests Posts March 2025 March 2025 - Distribute document to all chairs.
Establish Conference Hashtags March 2025 March 2025 - Avoid clashes with existing events such as Austin City Limits.
Collect Tags/Hashes for Workshops March 2025 March 2025 - -

2. Disseminating Conference Information

This responsibility concerns disseminating information about the conference (calls for papers, etc.) to the largest possible appropriate technical audience.

Task Start Deadline Dependency Notes
Delegate Responsibility Among Chairs Feb 2025 March 2025 - For example, managing social media outlets or mailing lists.
Create & Share Joint Posting Schedule Feb 2025 March 2025 - -
Invite Chairs to Pre-specify Social Media Requirements March 2025 March 2025 Create and include structured sheet Structured into a) pre-conference; b) during conference, c) after the conference. Send reminders via Slack.
Create LLM prompts for quick message drafting March 2025 March 2025 - -

3. During-Conference Activities

Initiating and maintaining a social media stream before and during the conference (e.g., Facebook and X (Twitter)). We should consider setting up a single Facebook and Twitter for all main conferences. Accessing and bringing in the press at the time of the conference

Task Start Deadline Dependency Notes
Obtain a list of First-ime Authors at ACL April 2025 April 2025 - (1) Contact ACL Anthology Director. (2) Send reminder 2 weeks before the conference.
Plan Posting Schedule for Activities April 2025 May 2025 - -
Request "Live-Tweeting" Volunteers May 2025 June 2025 - -
Plan "Live-Tweeting" and Send Instructions to Volunteers May 2025 June 2025 - These volunteers will continuously tweet and advertising ongoing events (talks, poster sessions, etc.,) to promote attendance from conference-goers.
Prepare list, content & schedule tweets for planned messages during the conference May 2025 June 2025 - These may include reminders of starting events, tutorials, keynotes, sessions, dinners, and award sessions, among other things.
Prepare list of (first) authors for Awarded Papers May 2025 June 2025 - Request their professional X/BlueSky handle in case they are to be referenced in live-tweets

4. Press/Media Interaction

This responsibility concerns interacting with local media outlets to gain broader publicity for the conference. The Press is usually interested in the following topics: * Major breakthroughs that change society * Famous invited speakers * Unusual/Unique Demo/Event

At ACL 2010 in Sweden, a local TV station interviewed several attendees. It does not hurt to contact relevant parties even if none of the above are explicitly present at the conference, in order to garner potential interest.

Task Start Deadline Dependency Notes
Identify Potential Press Outlets ASAP ASAP Finalized conference schedule -