The FINITE STRING Newsletter
Minutes of the 1980 ACL Meeting
Following are the minutes of the 18th Annual Business Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, held at the University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 19, 1980 with Bonnie Webber, President, presiding.
Minutes of the Previous Meeting
The minutes of the previous meeting are printed in Volume 2, Number 6, of the American Journal of Computational Linguistics.
Program Committee Report
Gary Hendrix, Chairman, reported for the Program Committee (which consisted of himself, Charles Fillmore, Jane Robinson, Ivan Sag, Henry Thompson, and Robert Wiiensky. Twenty-four papers were accepted out of the sixty-nine submitted, although two of the papers accepted were not presented because the author was not able to be present. Hendrix regretted that time limits and the necessity for balancing the program prevented accepting more papers. For the second year in a row, a proceedings for the meeting has been prepared; copies were distributed at registration. Fifteen of the papers are printed in full; abstracts are included for the rest; in addition, statements of varying lengths were prepared by most of the people participating in the panel sessions. [Details of the program are provided in the April-June 1980 issue of the AJCL, Volume 6, Number 2, pages 116-117. Some copies of Proceedings at $5 (add $1 for US first class mailing and $2 for overseas airprinted delivery) are still available and can be ordered from the Secretary-Treasurer. ]
Local Arrangements Committee Report
Kathy McKeown reported that 164 people had preregistered for the conference. She described plans for the banquet to be held in the Chinese Rotunda and Upper Egyptian Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania Museum; catering is provided by one of the downtown restaurants. [The final figures for attendance are: 187 total, including 50 students; 43 new members were added to ACL; 125 people attended the banquet.]
Secretary-Treasurer's Report
year represent the decision to waive dues for 1980 to those who were members for 1979 in view of the fact that the AJCL was not published during the year. He noted that ACL had received $1,550 from AFIPS this year and that ACL had provided support for COLING 80 in the amount of $660 plus other mailing costs. The current assets (as of 5-31-80) of $24,651.89 show that the organization is still in good financial shape, although it is explicitly recognized that the expenses associated with journal production represent only one of the three issues scheduled for the year. A more detailed report on financial status is included as an attachment to these Minutes (on page 192). In response to a question about how the money was invested, Walker reported that most of it was in a money-market account earning about 12 percent, with the balance in a short term corporate income fund at 16 percent. He added that the necessity to reinvest these funds soon at lower interest rates would reduce the earnings from investments in the near future.
Walker presented the membership status for 1977 and 1978, and for 1980 through 6-12, combining 1979 with 1980 because these figures are merged in view of the dues situation. For those three periods, the values for individual members were 500, 444, and 578; for institutional members, they were 201, 218, and 231; with total membership figures of 701, 662, and 809. Membership is clearly on the increase, and with the new AJCL out, prospects look particularly good. A more detailed report on membership status is included as an attachment to these Minutes (on page 192).
Editor's Report
George Heidorn reported that two issues of the American Journal of Computational Linguistics for 1980 have been printed, the second one having just been mailed. The second issue is similar to the first, containing three articles and three book reviews, but no additional material is included in the microfiche. Fifteen articles are in the review process, and there are 15 more conference papers that are being considered. In addition, twenty books are out for review. Heidorn acknowledged that his correspondence with authors has not been good and pledged to provide better response in the future. He announced that Michael McCord of the University of Kentucky had been appointed Associate Editor, remarking that his assistance should improve the overall effectiveness of the operation. Other editorial support may be added in the future. More manuscripts are solicited, as are announcements; in addition, comments on papers will be published as letters to the editor.
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Executive Committee Report
Webber reported on the discussions at the Executive Committee meeting which took place on 18 June.
Planning for the next meeting is still in progress. Discussions have been held with the Linguistic Society of America with regard to holding it in conjunction with their Annual Meeting in New York, 28-30 December 1981, at the new Hyatt Hotel. It was also proposed that we arrange panels and paper sessions at the AFIPS National Computer and Office Automation Conferences and perhaps at the West Coast Computer Fair. Members expressed concern about the timing, both in relation to the holiday period and to the 18 month hiatus; a recommendation was made to consider the possibility of holding it in conjunction with the Summer LSA Institute, which will be at Yale. Associating it with the Cognitive Science Society seems inappropriate on two grounds: the timing (Berkeley, in August just before the Vancouver IJCAI meeting); and the feeling that it would not be desirable to have the ACL so closely coupled with the CSS for the third year in a row.
Webber described her participation in a meeting of cognitive, behavioral, and psychological societies on 1 June 1980. - The purpose was to discuss forming a Federation that would provide better representation to federal funding agencies and Congress for this class of interests. There was representation from 14 societies, including the American Educational Research Association, the Society for Neurosciences, the Cognitive Science Society, and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, with memberships ranging from 14,000 to 350. Dues would be set initially at $1 per society member. In reviewing the proposal, the Executive Committee felt that the ACL did not need this kind of Washington presence at the moment - beyond what was provided by AFIPS - and that the group assembled did not really constitute a natural class for ACL. It was reported from the audience that the CSS membership had voted 3:1 to support participation.
With regard to AFIPS, Webber noted that ACL has been given two additional years to reach a goal of 1500 members. Whether we reach that number or not, the activities for additional membership are worthwhile.
Sondheimer described the plans for the membership drive. It will include preparation of brochures, gathering mailing lists from various sources, trading advertisements in various journals, staffing booths in various professional society meetings, and participating in other meetings on panels and in other ways that would increase awareness of the ACL.
The Executive Committee decision to invite the International Committee on Computational Linguistics to hold one of the next COLING conferences in the United States was approved unanimously by the members present.
Nominating Committee Report
Paul Chapin, on behalf of the Nominating Committee (himself, Jonathan Allen, and Ron Kaplan), submitted the following nominations for 1981 : President:
Norm Sondheimer, Sperry Univac Vice President:
Jane Robinson, SRI International Secretary-Treasurer:
Don Walker, SRI International Executive Committee (1981-1983):
Bonnie Webber, University of Pennsylvania He then announced that additional nominations from the floor were welcome, provided that the concurrence of the nominee had been secured in advance.
No additional nominations were reported, and the vote for the preceding slate was unanimous.
Old and New Business
Webber solicited old or new business, but none was forthcoming.
Resolutions Committee Report
Norm Sondheimer submitted the following:
Whereas the ACL's problem context is to nurture computational linguistics, whereas the ACL's medium is the annual meeting and journal, whereas the ACL's social context is to depend entirely on volunteer labor, whereas the ACL's current state and future prospects are rosy, I move to thank Gary Hendrix and his program committee of Charles Fillmore, Jane Robinson, Ivan Sag, Henry Thompson, and Robert Wilensky for braving to choose among so many fine papers and putting together this excellent program, the authors for proving them right, Bonnie Webber and her committee of Barbara Grosz and Jerry Hobbs for organizing the Parasession, Kathy McKeown and her local arrangements committee of Kathy Filliben, Gitaram Lanka, Interjeet Mani, Eric Mays, Emily Nagle, and Tom Williams for ensuring that none of us lacked food, shelter, and/or parking permits, ONR for financially supporting the Parasession, SRI International for producing the Call-for-Papers and the Advance Program, Sperry Univac for producing the Proceedings, Aravind Joshi and the Univ. of Penn. Comp, and Info. Sei. Dept. for contributing the Chinese Rotunda and Upper Egyptian Gallery as banquet venue and for keeping our meeting room air-conditioned, George Heidorn for bringing the hard-copy AJCL into existence, his Editorial Board and contributors for making it something of which to be proud, and last, but not least, Don Walker without whose hard work the ACL would certainly cease to exist.
The members expressed their approval, and the meeting was adjourned.
Donald E. Walker Secretary-Treasurer