Workshop Chair Handbook
Current Chairs:
| Name | Affiliation | Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Terra Blevins | University of Vienna | terrablvns@gmail.com |
| Christophe Gravier | Université Jean Monnet | christophe.gravier@univ-st-etienne.fr |
Overview of Responsibilities
The Workshop Chair is responsible for collaborating with the Workshop chairs for other ACL-affiliated conferences in a given year, in preparing and circulating the Call for Proposals, and in reviewing submissions.
Once the workshops for a given conference have been identified, the Workshop Chair is responsible for arranging dates, locations, refreshments, presentation and computer requirements, and all other special needs. It is essential that the Workshop Chair recognizes the different kinds of workshops and understand the policies regarding each. There are several categories of ACL workshops:
- Workshops associated with conferences and formally sponsored by an ACL SIG.
- Workshops associated with conferences but not formally sponsored by an ACL SIG.
- Workshops formally sponsored by an ACL SIG but not associated with an ACL conference.
- Workshops that are neither formally sponsored by a SIG nor associated with an ACL conference.
The following are the main responsibilities of the Workshop Chairs:
1. Cross-Committee Coordination\ 2. Managing Communication with ACL Workshop Organizers\ 3. Workshop Infrastructure and Planning
Breakdown of Responsibilities
1. Cross-Committee Coordination
In recent years, the selection of workshops has been made in unison with other conferences such as NAACL, EACL, AACL, EMNLP, etc. as appropriate. This helps ensure a variety of topics across conference locations and creates a more diverse pool for submissions. However, the conference-specific workshop chair will need to coordinate with the local chair to understand room availability (e.g., how many workshops are there room for).
| Task | Start | Deadline | Dependency | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contact Previous Year's Workshop Chairs | ASAP | July 2024 | - | Obtain registration and attendance statistics from recent years (through the ACL Office and last year’s chairs). This helps estimate the size of a workshop, which is important when assigning workshops to venues. Venues have different capacities and so it is important to have large/medium/small workshops distributed across venues in a reasonable manner. |
| Issue Joint Call for Workshops Alongside NAACL/ACL/EMNLP | Aug/Sept 2024 (when chairs are known) | Jan 2025 | - | Request that workshop organizers ask potential members of their proposed program committees to agree to serve, before submitting a workshop proposal. Before accepting a workshop proposal, the workshop chair should check with individual workshop organizers to make sure that the proposed members of the program committee have agreed to serve. |
| Review Submissions with ACL Workshop Officer and Workshop Chairs | Aug/Sept 2024 | Oct 2024 | - | (1) Set workshop/shared task deadline to early October and acceptance notifications to the end of October; (2) Large SIGs are expected to seek pre-approval for their workshops; (3) Workshops must be self-financing, with profits belonging to ACL (excl. SIG workshops, see here. (4) 2 reviewers are expected per workshop. |
Notes on the Workshop Selection Process: - Large workshops are pre-admitted: *SEM, WMT, CoNLL, other workshops that will have more than 100 participants (SemEval). However, the chairs need to get their venue preferences for the year. - Hold an online survey among ACL members (get mailing list from the ACL Office) asking them to indicate which workshops they would likely attend. - Consideration criteria include: Past interest, interest according to the survey, diversity, quality of the organizing team, size of the workshop, and novelty.
2. Managing Communication with ACL Workshop Organizers
This responsibility concerns sending initial information to ACL workshop organizers, collecting key details via a shared spreadsheet, and handling ongoing updates and requests to ensure smooth coordination and communication throughout the planning process.
| Task | Start | Deadline | Dependency | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Send Initial Information to ACL Workshop Organizers | ASAP | Mid Dec 2024 | - | Information should contain important dates for organizers, a spreadsheet for organizers to populate and a link to join the Google group (see Responsibility 3). |
| Manage Requests from Organizers | Oct 2024 | Jan 2025 | - | Includes publishing notifications and handling requests by workshops to change venues. |
| Gather Workshop Information in a Spreadsheet | Nov 2024 | Late Dec 2024 | - | (1) This helps keep track of all workshop information in a centralized location - see here for an example; (2) This should include proposed workshop schedules, including breaks and lunch timing; (3) Often, 1 guest speaker per workshop can have their registration waived - this should also be recorded here; (4) Workshop organizers must share their schedule and organizers with the handbook chair ~6 weeks prior to the conference. |
| Address Workshop Organizer Concerns | Dec 2024 | Conference Dates | - | Various workshops will encounter issues throughout the organization process (such as choosing the appropriate paper submission site or deciding on deadlines). The workshop chairs should address these concerns as they arise or raise these issues with the appropriate third party to make sure they are resolved. |
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3. Workshop Infrastructure and Planning
This responsibility includes setting up Softconf submission pages, maintaining the workshop organizers mailing list, coordinating proceedings for merged workshops, updating the conference website, and assigning rooms for each workshop.
| Task | Start | Deadline | Dependency | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Set up Submission Pages for Softconf | Dec 2024 /Jan 2025 | Before the final call for submissions from workshops | - | Workshop organizers can reach out the the SoftConf support team to begin this process. Note that workshops are allowed to use Softconf or OpenReview for submissions; the organizers are expected to set up the OpenReview page themselves. |
| Create Workshop Organizer Mailing List | Dec 2024 | ASAP | - | We recommend requiring ALL workshop organizers to join this mailing list, and to confirm that they all accept the invitation. Even this cycle, where we asked all organizers to join the mailing list, we have a number of workshops that missing crucial information due to the organizers not accepting the mailing list invitation. |
| Ask Merged Workshops for Joint/Separate Proceedings | Before workshop pages are set up on the conference website | - | - | - |
| Update Workshop Pages | When workshop list is finalized | - | - | Contact Website chairs and give them information for publishing the workshop on the website. |
| Allocate Workshops to Rooms | When workshop list is finalized | - | - | (1) Ask ACL Secretary for help; (2) There may be recontracting needed (+/- 1 room per venue, depending on contract and budget; (3) Update website with room allocations and send the plan to Workshop organizers for double checking. |
| Workshop Prroceeding Publications | late May 2025 | July 1 2025 | - | The workshop chairs will support the publication chairs in collecting the required materials for proceedings from each workshop. This process often runs into technical issues for individual workshops, and we suggest prompting organizers to begin this process ASAP to handle any issues in a timely manner. We would also recommend reminding the organizers to collect the ACL copyright transfer form from their authors during the camera ready process, as this is needed for the ACL publicaiton process. |
| Write Progress Report | When/if asked by General Chair | ASAP | - | - |
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