Welcome to Birds-of-a-Feather Meetups!
At NAACL 2022, we are continuing the tradition of conducting birds-of-a-feather (or BoF) meetups to help newbie researchers get in touch with other people working on the same areas. For people who haven’t attended such meetups before, here’s a quick primer!
What do we hope to accomplish with BoFs?
- We want to provide junior researchers/people attending ACL for the first time a platform to discuss ideas and issues with other researchers in their areas of interest. This can be a good avenue for junior researchers to get feedback on ongoing ideas, learn about relevant ongoing projects at other groups/universities and develop a broader understanding of their field of interest.
- We want to facilitate more exchange of research ideas, and enable collaborative discussions.
How are BoF sessions structured?
- All BoF sessions are hybrid, and all NAACL registrants are welcome to attend in-person/online!
- Each meetup will be led by 1-2 experienced researchers in that area.
- Anyone who wants to attend can join; prior signup is not needed.
- Links to join virtually would be available in your Underline schedule.
When are the BoF sessions happening?
| Topic | Day | Time (PDT) | Speaker | Room | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| – | EMNLP 2022 Information Session | Monday | 11 am-noon | Nizar Habash | 502 Cowlitz |
| A1 | QA | Monday | 11 am-noon | Luca Soldaini | 506 Samish |
| A2 | Multilinguality | Monday | 3-4 pm | Hila Gonen | 502 Cowlitz |
| A3 | ML for NLP | Monday | 3:30-4:30 pm | Jason Eisner | 502 Cowlitz |
| A4 | Ethics | Tuesday | 11 am-noon | Kai Wei Chang | 502 Cowlitz |
| A5 | Generation | Tuesday | 11 am-noon | Jiacheng Xu | 506 Samish |
| A6 | Interpretability | Tuesday | Yanai Elazar, Sarah Wiegreffe | 502 Cowlitz | |
| A7 | Multimodal (vision, audio, gestures) | Tuesday | 2-3 pm | Hung Le | 506 Samish |
| A8 | Semantics/NLU | Tuesday | 2-3 pm | Shane Steinert-Threlkeld | 501 Chiwawa |
| A9 | Theme: Human centered NLP | Wednesday | 11 am-noon | Joyce Chai | 502 Cowlitz |
| A10 | Dialog/Discourse | Wednesday | 2-3 pm | Yunyao Li | 502 Cowlitz |
| A11 | Information Extraction | Wednesday | 2-3 pm | Parisa Kordjamshidi | 506 Samish |
| A12 | ACL 60-60 Initiative | Wednesday | 3-4 pm | Mona Diab | 506 Samish |
Though BoFs are currently scheduled for one hour, attendees can carry forward the discussion after the session ends on other media (or even continue in the same room if it is available!).
If you have any questions about the information listed in the schedule, please get in touch with the DEI Academic Inclusion Chairs. Please reach out to Underline for technical difficulties on the day of the session.
Additional Guidelines for Attendees
- Please try to reach the room/zoom link (if virtual) for the session you are interested in 5 minutes early if feasible. This could help you catch any technical issues early, especially if you are participating virtually.
- Your session leads will help with introducing yourself briefly.
- The session format can vary based on the preferences of the lead, for example it may be structured as an Ask Me Anything, a slide deck roundtable, a roundtable Q&A etc., Your session lead will explain the format at the beginning of the session.
- Please follow the participation guidelines set by the session lead (e.g., raising your hand to ask questions, keeping your mics muted, etc.)
- Please do not record the session.
- Please abide by the ACL Anti-Harassment Policy at all times.
We hope you enjoy these meetups, and get a chance to make new friends who share your research interests!