CCC Chapter

Chapter of Conferences Coordination Committee

(A) Missions

(A.1) Approve new conferences under the AFNLP coordination.

(A.2) Exclude inactive conferences currently under coordination.

(A.3) Coordinate those approved conferences.

(A.4) Create and supervise the AFNLP flagship conference.

(A.5) Interact with other influential international conferences, and hold joint events when it is appropriate.

(** Note) For example, ACL and Coling.

(B) Organization

(B.1) Committee members

(B.1.1) Committee members will come from three different sources: (1) Representatives of international conferences that are not specifically related to any regional association (international conference members, hereafter), (2) Representatives of regional associations (regional association members, hereafter) (that might or might not have their own official conference series), and (3) Regional representatives (where there is no related association in that region) and senior experts (regional representative and expert members, hereafter).

(** Note) Since the conference can be held in any place and be organized by any association, the voice from the last two categories should also be heard in this committee.

(B.1.2) Each approved international conference or regional association in the above first two categories will have one representative (i.e., one committee member) in this Conferences Coordination Committee. The generation process of its associated representative is completely determined by its own steering committee or supervision board.

(B.1.3) The members in the last category will be nominated by the AFNLP nomination committee, and each nominated member in this category must first be approved by those members from the other two categories before he/she become a formal member. The approval procedure could be conducted in communication and needs agreement-votes over half the total number of the first two categories.

(B.1.4) The maximum number of the regional representative and expert members in the third category that the AFNLP nomination committee can nominate should not exceed 50% of the total number of the first two categories.

(B.1.5) Initial seed members in this committee will be invited by the steering committee of the AFNLP. After the first Conferences Coordination Committee has been set up, new members can be added (and inactive members can be excluded) according to the approved regulation of this Conferences Coordination Committee.

(B.1.6) All the committee members and the chair of the first Conferences Coordination Committee (invitation-based, as specified in the item (B.1.5)) should be generated before Coling-2002; and, this Conferences Coordination Committee should hold its first official meeting during Coling-2002.

(B.2) Committee Chair

(B.2.1) The chair-candidate of this Conferences Coordination Committee must be an official member (in any category) of this committee before the nomination. This chair will be nominated by the nomination committee of the AFNLP, and then must be approved by the other committee members under this committee.

(B.2.2) The chair approval procedure would be regarded as a "Crucial" issue.

(** Note) Please see Section (C) for more detailed explanation on "Crucial" issues.

(B.3) Term Period

(B.3.1) The term for each member and the chair of this committee is two years.

(B.3.2) The term (for both members and chair) will be synchronized with the flagship conference. It starts from the first day after the AFNLP flagship conference session of that year, and end at the last day of the next AFNLP flagship conference session. The re-election will be conducted by a communication voting, and the election process should be started 6 months before the flagship conference date and should have been completed before the AFNLP flagship conference.

(** Note) That is, all committee members and the chair of the next term must be decided before the opening of the AFNLP flagship conference (so that the chair and committee members of this term can turn over all associated documents and pass experience to the chair and committee members of the next term during the flagship conference).

(B.3.3) The chair can be dis-approved within his/her term, if over half of the members regard him/her as "Un-qualified" by voting.

(** Note) If over half of the members do not agree with the chair, the chair can hardly perform his/her duty.

(B.3.4) If the chair is dis-approved during the current term, and there is still more than half a year before the current term is formally terminated, the AFNLP steering committee should re-nominate another candidate from the Conferences Coordination Committee members, and then ask the committee members to approve the new appointment (which would be regarded as a "Crucial" issue). If only less than half a year remains in this term, the AFNLP steering committee could just directly appoint someone (not necessarily inside this Conferences Coordination Committee) as a temporary chair for mainly conducting the election of the next term and taking actions for those time-constrained issues.

(** Note) It is very likely that there is a serious dispute inside the committee, if that situation does happen, and we might need an outsider to conduct the remaining term if it is less than half a year.

(B.4) Duties of the Members and the Chair

(B.4.1) Each member should express his/her opinion for every official issue by voting, and help the chair to accomplish the missions of this committee.

(B.4.2) Each member should do his/her best to attend the Conferences Coordination Committee meeting to be held during the flagship conference (referred to as the "flagship conference committee meeting", hereafter) personally. In case of any difficulty to attend the AFNLP flagship conference committee meeting, a speaker, who is able to attend the meeting, should be appointed on the member's behalf.

(B.4.3) Each international conference member and each regional association member (i.e., those who are in the first two categories) have the duty to report their activities in the past two years during the flagship conference committee meeting. If no one reports the associated activities for that international-conference or regional-association in the flagship conference committee meeting, it will be automatically regarded as "inactive" during the past two years.

(B.4.4) Each member should report the information of the events (to be) held in the member's region to the committee chair every year, and help the committee to distribute the news of those events approved by this committee.

(B.4.5) Each member should encourage those prospective organizations/parities to submit proposals to host the future AFNLP flagship conferences.

(B.4.6) The chair should lead the committee members to pursue the goals determined by the committee.

(** Note) For example, promoting the flagship conference, coordinating those approved conferences, etc.

(B.4.7) The chair should hold the election process, according to the regulations specified in this Chapter, to generate those members and the chair of the next term.

(B.4.8) The chair should make sure that at least one proposal for the future AFNLP flagship conferences will be submitted and approved in the coming flagship conference committee meeting.

(B.4.9) When there is a conflict between the flagship conference program chair and the local organizing chair, the chair should help resolve the dispute and make sure that the flagship conference is well organized and successfully held.

(C) Decision Making

(C.1) A voting procedure will be automatically approved as an "official voting process" (i.e., its voting result will be automatically approved as an official conclusion), if the voting is conducted by over half of the members (exclusive) in a face-to-face meeting, or if the number of replies for a communication voting request is over two thirds of the total number of committee members (exclusive).

(** Note) A face-to-face meeting is usually held during the flagship conference.

(C.2) An issue, not rated as "Crucial", can be approved only if its number of valid agreement-votes is over half the number of total official counts (exclusive) under an official voting process. Here the number of official counts is defined as the total number of attendants for a face-to-face meeting, and would be the total number of replies received for a communication voting.

(C.3) An issue, rated as "Crucial", can be approved only if its number of valid agreement-votes is both over two thirds the number of total official counts (exclusive) under an official voting process, and also over half the total number of members in this committee (exclusive).

(C.4) Any modification to the regulations of this Chapter (after its first version has been finalized and approved) is regarded as a "Crucial" issue.

(C.5) Approving either new international-conference-members or new regional-association-members is regarded as a "Crucial" issue. Excluding either inactive international-conference-members or inactive regional-association-members is also regarded as a "Crucial" issue.

(C.6) Approving the next chair (nominated by the nomination committee) is regarded as a "Crucial" issue.

(C.7) Determining if a specific issue should be rated as "Crucial" is itself an issue not rated as "Crucial".

(C.8) A topic can be listed as an official issue for voting by either being raised by the chair or jointly proposed by over 1/4 the number of the committee members.

(** Note) In normal situations, most official issues would be raised by the chair. However, the issue of "Dis-approving the chair" would be raised by the committee members.

(C.9) The chair can decide if an issue should be rated as "Crucial" by himself/herself, or he/she can ask the committee members to make the decision according to the above item (C.7).

(D) Operation

(D.1) A face-to-face official committee meeting should be held each time when the flagship conference is held.

(D.2) Conferences Coordination

(D.2.1) New international-conferences and regional-associations can submit their written membership application messages via any member. The committee will then vote the membership applications.

(D.2.2) The international-conference-member (in the first category) and the regional-association-member (in the second category) who are inactive for four years will be automatically listed as the candidates to be discussed and voted for exclusion from this committee in the flagship conference committee meeting.

(** Note) Please see the definition of "Inactive" in item (B.4.3).

(D.2.3) This committee should negotiate a two-years calendar for all those approved conferences during the flagship conference committee meeting.

(** Note) That is, this committee should jointly plan and promote those future events to avoid possible conflict.

(D.3) AFNLP Flagship Conference

(D.3.1) The organizer of each flagship conference should be decided at least two years before the event time in the flagship conference committee meeting.

(D.3.2) The flagship conference should be held every other year starting from 2003.

(** Note) This implies that the flagship conference will be held at 2003, 2005, etc. Since there is no clear consensus for the name of this flagship conference, it will be decided later. However, we will start to contact and negotiate with the NLPRS steering committee (as it is the best candidate that matches our criteria so far) to convert NLPRS into the AFNLP Flagship Conference.

History Record:

1. Drafted Version approved at 5/1/2002 .

2. Formal Version approved at 9/28/2002 .

3. First Revision (add Item (C.9)) approved at 9/28/2002 .