Attendees: 

  Claire Cardie (secretary)
  Barbara Di Eugenio (treasurer)
  Ralph Grishman (board member)
  Eduard Hovy (board member)
  Diane Litman (chair)
  Kathy Mc Coy (ex-officio board member)
  Martha Palmer (board member)
  Philip Resnik (board member)
  Lyn Walker (board member)
  Jan Wiebe (board member)

  Also: NAACL-conference-related guests for items 1-3 below.
  
1. NAACL-2000 program chair report: Jan Wiebe

Jan gave a brief report on NAACL-2000 as program chair.  Details
are in her written report.


2. NAACL-2000 general chair report: Marie Meteer

Marie Meteer gave a short version of her written report on NAACL-2000
as general chair of the conference. We then discussed some items that
might be changed, or at least reconsidered for subsequent NAACL
conferences:
  - We discussed the possibility of hiring a company to deal with the
  web site for subsequent conferences.  It was suggested that it may
  even be possible to hire AAAI to do it. 

  - On the membership form, it would have been useful to include a box
  to check if the member is willing to volunteer for various NAACL
  events so that the NAACL could have a list of people from which to
  draw when new tasks arose.
  
3. NAACL-2001. 

We next discussed a issues w.r.t. next year's conference.  Some of the
key issues discussed included the following:

  - Workshop and tutorial location. 

  - Conference dates. 

  - Conference name. 

4. Setup committee report.

The setup committee had submitted its report before the meeting, so
there was very little discussion on this item.  The setup committee
did note that the NAACL constitution was purposefully underspecified. 

5. Chair's report: Diane Litman

Diane briefly summarized her written report (available by request from
Claire) and outlined the main topics to be covered in the rest of the
meeting. 

6. Secretary report: Claire Cardie

Claire walked through the main items that she has been working on
since January and that were described in her written report (available
by request from Claire).  The main topic of discussion was some
suggestions for the new web page. 

7. Treasurer report: Barbara Di Eugenio

Barbara briefly summarized her written treasurer report (available by
request from Claire). The main issues that she raised and that were
discussed briefly were the following:

   - Need guidelines on money issues.  
   - All NAACL fundraising activities should go through Barbara.
   - Various options for setting up an NAACL bank account were
     discussed. Further discussion between Barbara and Kathy on this
     is required. 

8.  Policies

We next discussed a collection of NAACL "policy" issues.

A. Conference frequency

Diane presented the following 7-year tentative schedule for ACL,
NAACL, EACL, and COLING conferences.


B. Joint NAACL/ACL conferences.

The amount of required ACL vs. NAACL input for each "joint" conference
was discussed.  It was decided that the NAACL chair will voice the
executive committee's opinions to the ACL exec since he/she sits on
that committee.

C. We next discussed the whether or not NAACL executive committee
   officials should sit on NAACL conference committees.  Diane
   described the current ACL policy, which excludes its exec members
   from being on the PC for all ACL and ACL chapter events. The NAACL
   executive committee voted to adopt this policy for the NAACL as
   well.

D. Sandee couldn't be at the meeting, but she sent us a statement
   regarding the issue of the required seniority of PC chairs, which
   was discussed. No particular seniority policy was adopted.

E. We also discussed a few circumstances in which the NAACL Exec
   should have veto power. One case is in the selection of the NAACL
   conference program chair, the area chairs, and other key
   organizers. Ed's detailed conference schedule indicates those
   decisions that require NAACL Exec approval.  The treasurer will
   make travel support decisions. 

F. We next discussed the desire to make the NAACL senior program
   committee lunch a tradition, adding it to the conference budget.

G. The NAACL student research workshop was discussed next.  The need
   for a policy for appointing chairs of the student workshop and for
   deciding who does what for the workshop was duly noted.

9. ACL 2002.

We briefly discussed possible locations for ACL 2002, which should be
located somewhere on the west coast.  Ed listed some specific location
options.

10. Constitution.

Lyn proposed a plan for phasing in a new executive board members.  In
short, the original NAACL exec board members (Ed, Sandee, and Lyn)
will leave the board next year (starting 2001).  Two new members will
be elected to replace them so that, in January of 2002, we will have a
continous 4-person board with two people leaving and two new people
entering the board every year.  The proposal was approved unanimously.

We next discussed the role of the executive committee in the executive
committee election process.  The nominating committee's role is to
elicit nominations (to which the membership at large can add
names). The executive committee cannot override any of the
nominations. Self-nominations are ok.  The nominating committee also
generally can't filter any nominations. 

11. Additional executive committee tasks.

We discussed a commitment to some additional goals for the executive
committee: outreach to industry; outreach to related research
communities.  A discussion on outreach to other N. American groups was
postponed.