[Sigdl-l] Call for Bids to Host CLEF 2013 - The Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum - September 2013

[Nicola Ferro]

INTRODUCTION

The CLEF Initiative (Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum, formerly known as Cross-Language Evaluation Forum) is a self-organized body whose main mission is to promote research, innovation, and development of information access systems with an emphasis on multilingual and multimodal information with various levels of structure.

The CLEF Initiative is structured in two main parts:
- a series of Evaluation Labs, i.e. laboratories to conduct evaluation of information access systems and workshops to discuss and pilot innovative evaluation activities;
- a peer-reviewed Conference on a broad range of issues, including
  - investigation continuing the activities of the Evaluation Labs;
  - experiments using multilingual and multimodal data; in particular, but not only, data resulting from CLEF activities;
  - research in evaluation methodologies and challenges.

Since 2000 the CLEF has played a leading role in stimulating investigation and research in a wide range of key areas in the information retrieval domain, becoming well-known in the international  IR community. It has also promoted the study and implementation of appropriate evaluation methodologies for diverse types of tasks and media. Over the years, a wide, strong, and multidisciplinary research community has been built, which covers and spans the different areas of expertise needed to deal with the spread of CLEF activities.


CALL FOR BIDS

The CLEF Steering Committee solicits proposals from groups interested in organizing the CLEF conference and labs in September 2013.

Guidelines on submitting a bid can be found in the Template for Bids available at:

http://www.clef-initiative.eu/documents/71612/87713/CLEF-Initiative-Template_for_bids.docx

Bids must be submitted by Monday, April 2nd 2012 by email to the Steering Commitee Chair Nicola Ferro (chair at clef-initiative.eu). 

The Steering Committee will review and select the proposals. The Steering Committee can ask for modifications and changes to the proposals, if deemed necessary.

Interested parties can contact the Steering Committee Chair Nicola Ferro (chair at clef-initiative.eu) to receive further details.


IMPORTANT DATES

- Bid submission deadline: April 2nd, 2012
- Feedback to bidders and discussion: April - May 2012
- Bid selection: June 2012


STEERING COMMITTEE

- Martin Braschler, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland
- Khalid Choukri, Evaluations and Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA), France
- Paul Clough, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
- Nicola Ferro, University of Padua, Italy
- Julio Gonzalo, National Distance Education University (UNED), Spain
- Donna Harman, National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), USA
- Jaana Kekäläinen, University of Tampere, Finland
- Carol Peters, ISTI, National Council of Research (CNR), Italy
- Emanule Pianta, Centre for the Evaluation of Language and Communication Technologies (CELCT), Italy
- Maarten de Rijke, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Alan Smeaton, Dublin City University, Ireland