Date:   Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Time: 	7:00 p.m. - sometime in the evening (including dinner)
Place:  Pradera private dining room, Westin Hotel

****************************************************************************

7:30 HLT/NAACL CONFERENCE REPORT (with Ed, Marti, Mari, and Priscilla)
- Program Chairs (Mari and Marti)

Marti gave the report.  

Really good program; due to really strong PC.  Very prompt and helpful
feedback from the joint HLT/NAACL board as well as the NAACL exec at
key points.  PC was great; added short paper reviewing at the end and
all but one member agreed to do it. PC also drummed up papers; all of
them came to the PC meeting.

Philosophy was to allow PC to deal with content issues, but shield
them from everything else.

Paper decisions were accepted all by quality; PC decided that they wanted
interesting stuff; not just incremental, but well done papers. Ended
up getting many more speech papers than, say ACL.  Mari decided to
make the speech paper call be focused on more of the NLP/IR-related
topics.  Graeme noted that there weren't as many IR papers.  Marti
pointed out that IR-related areas were covered by the IE,
summarization, etc. papers.

Diane asked how the traditional CL areas fared?  Marti said pretty
well.  Ed said that there isn't really any venue for, say
theorem-proving and theoretical semantics papers.  Need to make clear
that parsing and FS methods are welcome.  Marti said that there are
three sessions on parsing.  There were also lots of lexical resource
and methods papers, which was exciting.  Marti had fun!!

Priscilla and others noted that we should have sent out reminders
about submission deadlines and registration earlier!!  

Marti said that Dekang was GREAT!  Marti's software was also well
received.

Mari and Marti worked together really really well.  

Ed said that with Marti, Mari, and Dekang, things went really
smoothly.

Marti noted that the deadline timing didn't turn out to be a problem.
The short paper deadline was more problematic, especially in terms of
getting reviewers to deal with the short reviewing period.

 - GENERAL CHAIR (Ed)

Ed said that NAACL is so new that it doesn't have any traditions yet;
it should be something very different than ACL, which it is.  Has
components of ACL and HLT. Has worked out well. Ed is really happy
with the outcome.

Remoteness of Edmonton, orange alert, SARS kept numbers down somewhat,
but it looks like the conference will make money in spite of these
things.

Lynette noted that foreign attendance is down from HLT attendance.
Should maybe try to get more international representation on the PC
(even though it's the NAACL conferenc)? Could be other problems with
overseas attendance this year. Lynette said that EACL has more
outreach for their conferences; we should maybe do the same.

Demo discussion ensued...

Discussion ensued on tutorial pricing.  Are they too much? Do we have
too many?  Priscilla said that 6 is the max or we risk having to
cancel them. Additional discussion on tutorials and workshops...

Lynette: noted that we need to have the chair for the next conference
HERE at these meetings to hear about successes/problems.

Graeme: HLT advisory board lunch meeting decided that it would be good
to have a joint meeting again.  They're looking for names for next
year's conference and don't want to lose their chance to have input
into this. Hope that we'd ratify this tonight; get membership feedback
at the Friday meeting.  [Lengthy discussion on how/when to get
membership feedback.]

Composition of next HLT-NAACL board was discussed. Various folks are
retiring from the NAACL exec, so will need to replace them.

Lynette emphasized the need to select the right next general chair
(and program chair) since the right vision needs to be imbued.

- ACL OFFICE (Priscilla)

Registrations.  Only real problem is with a couple of reporting bugs.

Cancellations.  Eight total. Three were because of cancelled
tutorials. Another was because of immigration; another health
problems; another because work wouldn't allow travel. 

Workshop-only registrations: only 26.  Then again, people can't
just drive here and sign up.  Need a student workshop fee!!!

Why didn't people take the free ACL memberships?  4 or 5 people.
Seemed to be because of the wording in the materials noting the "free
year".  

There were no complaints about registration fees, even the rather
expensive on-site registration fees.


- LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS (Dekang)

Marti noted that the AV folks have been great.  Dekang said that the
AV person had been working 18 hrs a day.  Diane asked about the number of
room nights required. We agreed to 1080. Dekang and Priscilla noted
that we pay nothing for the meeting rooms; and met the number of
required reserved rooms.

Priscilla: the general manager at the Westin is thrilled; they're
willing to do anything for this conference.  Dekang: Weekend before
the pre-reg deadline, we had a $21K liability. Marti noted that we
should explain how this worked to the members...so that maybe they'll
sign up sooner. Priscilla said that a similar thing happened with the
recent DigiGov conference. Lynette said that this will be a concern
for next year's conference.


NAACL OFFICER REPORTS 

  - Chair (Diane)

  - Secretary (Claire)

  - 2002 NOMINATING COMMITTEE (Report from Lori via Diane)

  - 2003 NOMINATING COMMITTEE (Claire)
 

9:25 NAACL'04(/HLT?)

   - MITRE Bid (Lynette)

   Only issue is the hotel rate. It's lower than Seattle, but still a
   bit high.

   HLT-NAACL crew discussed the dates. The early May dates seemed
   best.  Need to steer clear of the other conferences, esp. LREC.

   Vote to accept the bid? Unanimous yes.  Put Christy in touch with
   Priscilla and Dekang.  Need to do a site visit very
   soon. 

-- Discussion (coordination with HLT, conference chairs, site visit)

NAACL'05(ACL)

   Will be joint with ACL. 


EDUCATION REPORTS

   Owen reported on the JHU/NAACL summer school.  Recommended that we
   get more involved in getting speakers for the summer school.  We
   committed $10K again this year.  Diane re-explained the NASSLLI
   situation. LSA summer school discussed. We do need some policy for
   what types/areas of students to fund for the summer school.
   

FUNDING LIASONS (Mark Johnson's mail)

   Advertise ourselves to ARDA, DARPA, NSF, HOMELAND SECURITY,
   NIH/NLM.  

     WEB PAGE / ARCHIVES / EMAIL (Claire)

     OTHER BUSINESS? (student board)

     NEXT MEETINGS 

	- Business meeting (Friday 11-12)
	- Joint NAACL-exec / ConferenceAdvisoryCommittee (Friday at 7)

- TREASURER (Drago): shadow account balance.

  Do we want to fund student travel?  Diane: normally have student
  funding for the workshop to fund some student travel.  Need to
  communicate this to the next chair.  


LATIN AMERICA (Diane)
    
   What to do.  Who should do it.  We need key people to devote time.
   NSF would be supportive.

STUDENT BOARD

   EACL is really happy with their student organization.  They've
   taken over the web site.  No real need for us to do this.