Diversity & Inclusion Chairs

Diversity & Inclusion Chairs

Pranav A, Samira Shaikh, Pat Verga, Murathan Kurfali, Khyati Mahajan, Prathyusha Jwalapuram, Luca Soldaini, and Sabine Weber

Call for Affinity Group Socials

We are calling for expressions of interest to host affinity group socials as part of the NAACL 2021 virtual conference (June 6–11, 2021).

To express interest in organising an affinity group social, please fill the following form by May 15.

The purpose of affinity group socials is cohort and community building within NAACL. They can be platforms for both scientific and social exchange. Previous virtual affinity group socials have been highly successful, such as those held at EMNLP 2020 where both Queer in AI and Black in AI organised events.

Affinity groups hosting socials will decide on the content, timing and length of socials themselves, and will also handle sign-up for these events. The NAACL Diversity and Inclusion committee will promote the socials on the conference website, the virtual conference platform, and social media. If desired, we will also create virtual conference rooms and promote links for those.

Affinity group socials must abide by ACL’s Code of Conduct: https://www.aclweb.org/portal/content/acl-code-ethics

Requests for affinity group socials which are in conflict with the above, or not in line with the goals of an affinity group social, will be rejected.

Virtual socials may adopt one of the following formats:

  • Private Gather town or Topia: Used by WINLP @ AACL 2020 and Queer in AI @ EMNLP 2020. This can be useful if you want the socials to be accessible for folks who are not registered for the main conference. We will not provide the Gather town; we expect you to set up your own Gather town for your event.

  • Public Zoom calls: We can provide Zoom rooms for your event (note that the number of participants might be capped). Similar events were held by WINLP @ AACL 2020 and Queer in AI @ EMNLP 2020. This can be useful if you want the socials to be accessible for folks who are not registered for the main conference.

  • NAACL’s Gather town: This would be generally restricted to registrants and a designated area/room within the Gather town can be assigned for your event.

  • Panel webinars: This can be done either on Youtube (example: NLP with Friends), Twitch, Instagram live, Twitter spaces or Tiktok livestreams. NAACL can provide a zoom webinar platform for your event (restricted to registrants only).

We recommend that you either opt for a private Gather town space or a public Zoom call so that your socials will be accessible to folks who are not registrants of NAACL. We believe that affinity group socials which are aimed especially at underrepresented folks should be accessible without any barriers. If you are opting for Gather town, we strongly suggest you read about Gather town’s limitations on accessibility.

Informal enquiries can be made to: naacl2021-diversity-inclusion@googlegroups.com.