Internal Communication Chair
The main task of the internal communication chairs is to triage incoming mails sent to the conference organizers and / or PC chairs (it is common practice to use mailing lists and aliases, e.g. acl2024-programchairs@googlegroups.com, to contact organizers or chairs).
Emails sent to the conference mailing list can also be forwarded to some mail management portal (aka ticket management software) such as Freshdesk so that chairs can supervise the procedure. Note that the ACL Rolling Review team has set up an ACL account on Freshdesk. Jonathan Kummerfeld is the person in charge of this account.
When triaging emails through Freshdesk, a filter is added to sort emails (i.e. separate mails concerning submissions / ACL Rolling Review from mails concerning other matters).
Two internal communication co-chairs are usually appointed to share the workload. One way to coordinate triaging is to use an online shared folder (e.g. on a drive) containing the list of Conference chairs and the following files :
- a shared calendar where each of the communication chairs can indicate her/his availabilities ;
- an internal FAQ where each of the communication chairs can copy/paste already answered questions.
In some cases, two mailing lists are used by conference chairs (one for questions related to paper submission and one for all other questions). This may lead to emails sent to the wrong address.
On top of emails, several other communication channels between chairs are generally used (e.g. instant messaging / slack channels). It is important to define how to best communicate with each other (i.e. which channel to prioritize).
Some recommendations :
- use some long-lasting editing facility (e.g. the ACL wiki) to share the internal FAQ so that communication chairs can benefit from work done at previous editions ;
- have a local contact point for visa questions as early as possible in order to be able to direct questions appropriately and get concrete information ;
- share a common retro-planning (timeline) with the main dates regarding not only the publication process but also the conference organization (many people will ask when will registration be open, or when will the information about presentation guidelines available, etc.). It would be helpful to announce these dates on the conference website as soon as possible (or at least to share them with communication chairs).
Additional In-depth Information / Tips and Tricks
About Freshdesk management
Freshdesk management is a daily job from multiple members. IC chairs serve as the routers, dispatching tickets to PC / GC and any other kind of chair (publication chairs, workshop chairs and so on).
IC chairs represent the customer service, the face of the conference assistance (while IC chairs never invent information, they serve as welcoming desk operators). This means a ticket should not stay without an answer for more than 1 or 2 days (excluding weekends maybe). An answer is simple to give : "thank you for mentioning this issue, we will forward it to the PC chairs and let them reply to you directly". When I started systematically replying, multiple participants replied immediately with positive feedback, knowing that their query was not lost, and did not fall into a robotic messaging system.
However, IC's role in Freshdesk does not limit to this: the main role of IC is to ease the work for other chairs by serving as: - Automatic responders for direct information: i.e. when the IC is certain of an answer, they reply directly without bothering the other chairs. This information often comes from the website FAQ or website general information. sometimes it comes from the slack and direct discussions with PC/GC chairs - Automatic responders for updates / recurring questions: Many times, participants ask the same question again and again. Usually, when the question comes up several times in a row, the IC has to prevent answering and directly ask the suitable answer to the PC or relevant chairs. This will change the status of the answer to the previous bullet point (meaning it become general verified information to directly answer) - FAQ updater: IC has to update the FAQ with verified information (through pull requests). This really prevents a lot of spamming. Yes, surprisingly, participants look at the FAQ! IC chairs should maintain an internal FAQ for elements to add or not in the official FAQ (the website) later on. - Information gathering: information comes from many sources (PC, GC, Underline, a simple whova post, etc.). IC definitely has to merge all this information into one document. this eases fixes and following directions from the GC (or PC) - Filtering/quick lookup provider: Freshdesk is cute at first, then it gradually becomes a hellish stack of tickets of many kinds. During ACL 24 I added a TLDR at the beginning of each forwarded ticket for the other chairs. Program chairs heavily relies on this, it really saves them a lot of time prioritizing tickets (i.e. they did not read the tickets anymore, but only the tiny TL;DR to choose to respond now or later on). Here are two examples : "this issue comes from a gold sponsor, please look into it" or "and yet another person looking for a refund" (here hinting at the repetition is important to help PC and ACL finance persons). - On the lookup for everything about communication during the conference: it would be better to say the IC cannot enjoy the scientific talks. They have to get information, sometimes in person, to dispatch it to the participants on Whova.
Expected Workload
IC chairs also have to prepare time for the incoming conference : 1 hour / day at first ; then 2 hours / day ; then 4 hours/day ; finally almost full time during the conference.
Moderation during the conference
Whova micro-blogging and moderation is essentially the work of both IC and Virtual Chairs. IC chairs should be on the lookup for the "ask organizers anything" mandatory forum in whova. and they should use all their previous information gathering/dispatching work to do the same.
Providing statistics / metrics
Providing metrics is important to have an idea of the workload / number of tickets. While it mainly serves as an indicator, please find the ones from ACL 2024 workload for Freshdesk.
To create charts, you need to customize Freshdesk along with ccreating your own files / scripts. There is no standard way to do it.
You can find examples from 2024 here: stats folder
Also, here is a couple of charts that gives you an idea of the workload to expect:
Tips and Tricks
Being notified from PCs for announcements to participants. If possible, big announcements should be dispatched to the IC chairs. This often helps explain why there have been 200 tickets in one day when we wake up the next morning (e.g. after the PC chairs announced paper acceptance, etc.)
Conference days. During the conference days and one week before the conference, Whova + Freshdesk + in-person communication essentially takes the whole time. Those are crazy days (but nothing short compared to PC chairs I suppose).
Faster management: copy-paste to forward to chairs. Being able to respond fast is mandatory. IC chairs need to forward many tickets to the emails preferred by each chair. To keep up with this, please find there a markdown file with sections dedicated to quickly copy-paste the list of emails I need.
The process is simple : triple clic ; CTRL + C ; alt+tab ; CTRL+V
This saves a lot of time and prevents any mistakes compared to only relying on the shared excel file. This also allows the IC to only think in terms of chairs (e.g. "I need to forward this issue to the program chairs and the workshop chairs").
Faster management: email reply templates. It is important to prepare and update accordingly, a set of email templates to quickly reply to participants.
File Example Links
Of course these files should be shared among the IC chairs.