# Apologies for cross postings
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COLING/ACL 2006 NEWSLETTER NO. 3
March 22, 2006
This is the official newsletter of COLING/ACL 2006
The 21st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
and
The 44th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
For complete details, visit the conference web site at:
www.acl2006.org
www.coling2006.org
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:: Important Dates
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DEADLINES:
Interactive presentation submission deadline: March 22, 2006 (Wed)
** EXTENDED DEADLINE **
N.B. "interactive presentations" replace "demos" from previous years
Submission deadlines for workshops/co-located events: see
"Workshops/co-located Events" below
CONFERENCE DATES:
Pre-conference workshops/conferences: July 15-16, 2006 (Sat-Sun)
Tutorials: July 16, 2006 (Sun)
Main conference: July 17-21, 2006 (Mon-Fri)
Post-conference workshops/conferences: July 22-23, 2006 (Sat-Sun)
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:: Table of Contents
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1. Sponsors
2. Interactive Presentation Call for Papers
3. ACL/HCSNET Advanced Program in Natural Language Processing
4. Workshops/co-located Events
5. Registration Details
6. Conference Social Events
7. Excursion Details
8. Tour/Partner Excursion Details
9. Travel and Accommodation Bookings
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:: 1. Sponsors
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The current list of COLING/ACL 2006 sponsors is as follows:
- HCSNet (Platinum)
- Macquarie University (Gold)
- CSIRO (Gold)
- Microsoft Research (Gold, incl. wireless)
- Appen (Student Volunteers)
- Google (Silver, incl. cocktail reception)
- Yahoo Japan (Silver)
- XRCE (Bronze)
- DSTO (Glass)
- ELRA (Student Support Fund)
- NSF (student support for the Student Research Workshop)
For further details, see:
http://www.acl2006.mq.edu.au/sponsorship
If you are interested in providing financial support for COLING/ACL, details
of sponsorship opportunities can be found at:
http://www.acl2006.mq.edu.au/sponsorship/opportunities
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:: 2. Interactive Presentation Call for Papers
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Interactive Presentations Chair:
James Curran (University of Sydney)
Important Dates:
Paper submission deadline: March 22, 2006
Notification of acceptance: April 7, 2006
Camera ready papers due: April 28, 2006
The COLING/ACL 2006 Program Committee invites proposals for the Interactive
Presentation program. This forum will allow developers of implemented
software systems and libraries the opportunity to describe the design,
development and functionality of their work in an interactive setting.
It is also an opportunity to gain feedback from users and exchange ideas.
The committee encourages submission of early or experimental prototypes but
will also consider mature systems, particularly those with novel or
experimental features.
Please note that marketing commercial systems is not appropriate for the
Interactive Presentation program, and should be arranged as part of the
exhibit program. Please contact the Exhibits Chair, Menno van Zaanen
(menno@ics.mq.edu.au) for more details.
For further information regarding requirements, reviewing, formatting and
submission details, see the conference web site:
http://www.acl2006.org/submission/demos
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:: 3. ACL/HCSNET Advanced Program in Natural Language Processing
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This is a one-week event to be held at the University of Melbourne in the week
immediately prior to COLING/ACL (i.e. July 10-14). It will consist of advanced
tutorials on major topics of current research interest in NLP. The material
will be organised around four themes: NLP/IR; probabilistic parsing; lexical
semantics; and discourse & dialogue.
Twenty ACL Scholarships are available (deadline: May 1).
For further information, please see:
http://lt.csse.unimelb.edu.au/nlp06/
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:: 4. Workshops/co-located Events
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The final selection of COLING/ACL-2006 workshops and co-located events is as
follows. For further details (including updated submission deadlines), see the
individual web sites as listed below.
***************** PRE-CONFERENCE EVENTS *****************
================ JULY 15-16, 2006 ================
Title: 7th SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue
URL: http://sigdial06.dfki.de/
Submission deadline: March 13, 2006
Title: The Eighth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammar and
Related Formalisms (TAG+8)
URL: http://www.sfb441.uni-tuebingen.de/TAG+8/
Submission deadline: April 7, 2006
Title: INLG 2006: International Conference on Natural Language Generation
--- The Biennial Meeting of the Special Interest Group in Natural
Language (SIGGEN).
URL: http://www.ict.csiro.au/inlg2006/
Submission deadline: April 19, 2006
***************** POST-CONFERENCE EVENTS *****************
================ JULY 22, 2006 ================
Title: Frontiers in Linguistically Annotated Corpora 2006:
A Merged Workshop with 7th International Workshop on Linguistically
Interpreted Corpora (LINC-2006) and Frontiers in Corpus Annotation III
URL: http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~tim/events/frontiers2006/
Submission deadline: March 31, 2006
Title: Sentiment and Subjectivity in Text
URL: http://research.microsoft.com/~mgamon/ws3.aspx
Submission deadline: April 7, 2006
Title: Constraints and Language Processing (CSLP-06)
URL: http://www.cslp06.org/
Submission deadline: April 21, 2006
Title: 2nd Workshop on Ontology Learning and Population: Bridging the Gap between Text
and Knowledge
URL: http://olp.dfki.de/olp2/olp2_cfp.htm
Submission deadline: April 17, 2006
Title: Information Extraction Beyond the Document
URL: http://nlp.shef.ac.uk/result/iebd06/
Submission deadline: March 31, 2006
================ JULY 22-23, 2006 ================
Title: 2006 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
(EMNLP 2006)
URL: http://nlp.stanford.edu/emnlp06
Submission deadline: April 13, 2006
Title: Fifth SIGHAN Workshop on Chinese Language Processing
URL: http://www.sighan.org/swclp5/
Submission deadline: April 12, 2006
================ JULY 23, 2006 ================
Title: Multilingual Language Resources and Interoperability
URL: http://coli.lili.uni-bielefeld.dhamlri06/
Submission deadline: April 3, 2006
Title: Multiword Expressions: Identifying and Exploiting Underlying
Properties
URL: http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/~avillavicencio/mwe-acl06.html
Submission deadline: April 12,2006
Title: Linguistic Distances
URL: http://www.let.rug.nl/alfa/ling-distances/
Submission deadline: April 10, 2006 (** EXTENDED **)
Title: Task-Focused Summarization and Question Answering
URL: http://research.microsoft.com/~lucyv/WS7.htm
Submission deadline: May 1, 2006
Associated summarization task: Multilingual Summarization Evaluation
URL: http://research.microsoft.com/~lucyv/MSE2006.htm
Title: Annotating and Reasoning about Time and Events (ARTE)
URL: www.acl2006time.org
Submission deadline: March 31, 2006
Title: How can Computational Linguistics improve Information Retrieval?
URL: http://www.cet.sunderland.ac.uk/cliir/
Submission deadline: March 24, 2006
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:: 5. Registration Details
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We expect to have final registration fees, and the registration facility, up
and running by April 3. Please watch the website:
http://www.acl2006.mq.edu.au/registration
and be sure to REGISTER EARLY. Note that registration and accommodation
bookings are two separate steps to take.
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:: 6. Conference Social Events
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The main conference will start with WELCOMING COCKTAILS, at the Sydney
Convention Centre, on the evening of July 16 (Sun). Hopefully most people will
have arrived by then, those who have enjoyed the workshops and tutorials over
the first weekend will be ready to party, and it will provide a great
networking opportunity - the cost is included in your registration fee, you
may invite (and pay for) extra guests - we just need to know numbers.
The CONFERENCE DINNER will be held on July 20 (Thu) at Star City, which houses
Sydney's Casino and many other entertainment areas. The Ballroom there will
accommodate our dinner, which will hold some surprises - we promise a great
evening. The dinner must be booked separately, and you're of course welcome to
bring partners and guests. We've subsidized the price to make it accessible to
all. Star City is either a short walk from the Convention Centre, or a ride on
the monorail or light rail from the Centre and most of the Darling Harbour
hotels.
Another innovation this year - we'll have special POSTER SESSIONS on both
Monday and Tuesday evenings. Immediately following the day's last session,
the poster presenters will attend their posters - there will be snacks to eat,
and drinks vouchers will be awarded to delegates who converse constructively
with poster presenters! If you don't converse with poster people, there will
be a cash bar for you to buy your own drinks.
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:: 7. Excursion Details
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The traditional EXCURSION DAY will show you more of Sydney's most renowned
attractions. This whole day is INCLUDED in your registration fee, to ensure
that everyone partakes and relaxes on July 19 (Wed). You'll join a
cruise boat at one of the Darling Harbour wharves, and be taken across the
harbour to the world-famous Taronga Park Zoo. There you'll enjoy a tour and
morning tea, before rejoining the cruise boat and on to Manly. This beachside
suburb is very scenic, and has plenty of shops and cafes for you to enjoy at
leisure for a couple of hours. There will also be a coach available to take
delegates on a short trip to North Head, the entrance to Sydney Harbour, to
admire the view and in particular the old Quarantine Station there. At about
3:00pm you'll rejoin the cruise boat for a twilight trip home, with canapes
and drinks to finish a most relaxing day.
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:: 8. Tour/Partner Excursion Details
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At the main conference, in the Sydney Convention Centre, there will be a Tour
Hostess present during the Welcoming Cocktails (Sunday evening) and each
morning (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday) - to help delegates and
partners with advice and bookings for tours and sightseeing around Sydney. So
you won't be left wondering what to do in any spare time.
We have two Partner Excursions organized that you can register and pay for in
advance, to give you some of the best and most popular tours around Sydney to
look forward to. The two tours are:
(1) July 17, 2006 (Mon): Departs 2.00pm, returns 5.30pm
Sydney Highlights Tour
AUD$58 Adult, AUD$29 Child (4yrs - 14yrs inclusive)
Departs: Sydney Convention Centre
Returns: Hotels
Experience the vibrance of Sydney, one of the world's most spectacular
cities. See The Rocks (Sydney's birthplace), the Opera House, the Harbour
Bridge, Darling Harbour, Chinatown and cosmopolitan Kings Cross. Tour
downtown Sydney and visit Bondi Beach, Australia's most famous surf beach.
(2) July 21, 2006 (Fri): departs 8.15am, returns 5.45pm
Blue Mountains Day Tour, incl 2 course hot lunch
AUD$138 Adult, AUD$69 Child (4ys - 14yrs inclusive)
Departs: Sydney Convention Centre
Returns: Hotels
Travel over Sydney Harbour Bridge for a full circle tour of the Blue
Mountains. Sheer escarpments, rugged bushland and awe-inspiring views from
mountain lookouts. Ride the Scenic Railway, Scenic Flyway Cable Car and Skyway
Cable Car (own expense) and see the Three Sisters rock formation. Visit an
Australian Wildlife Park, meet unique Australian animals and perhaps have your
photo taken with a cuddly Koala! Fare Includes: Admission to Wildlife Park,
two course lunch.
Both of these tours may be booked on your registration online submission when
they're ready.
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:: 9. Travel and Accommodation Bookings
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We are providing a comprehensive service through which you can now book ALL
your travel, accommodation, and if you need to, rent roaming SIM cards for
your mobiles and rent Wireless Broadband access (see web site for details) for
use while in Australia. And you're not limited to the conference week itself -
LIDO will book you flights and accommodation anywhere, any time, so plan to
stay a while!
NOTE that there will be free of charge access to the internet for all
delegates attending the pre- and post-conference workshops and tutorials, at
the second venue (University of Technology, Sydney) - it will not be
wireless, but there will be plenty of terminals available for you to use via
a userid and password which will be supplied on registration.
ALSO at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, for Monday-Tuesday and
Thursday-Friday (the real conference days on site) there will be free
wireless access, sponsored by Microsoft Research, for all delegates. There
will also be PC's available (at a charge) via the normal SCEC facilities,
for those who don't have wireless access.
Accommodation bookings have been available for some time, and we've already
taken many rooms - so book early, to ensure the hotel of your choice. For
further details, pricing and links to the LIDO booking service, see:
http://www.acl2006.mq.edu.au/accommodation
If you have queries on any of the above facilities, please contact the
Secretariat:
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Contact details for the various COLING/ACL organisers can be found at:
http://www.acl2006.mq.edu.au/contact
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