Some three thousand scientists and researchers are expected to participate in the upcoming EMNLP 2021 (2021 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing). Based on current estimates, 600+ people will be in beautiful Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, with thousands more attending and presenting online.
Unique in the design is that every attendee, whether local or virtual, will have a rich engaging immersive experience. Presenters and attendees can either be local or remote, with full and equal participation for all.
It is easier said than done with an exciting program spanning 5 days (November 7-11 2021), with 21 workshops, 2 satellite conferences, many parallel sessions, keynotes, plenaries, posters, and more.
Powered by Underline (underline.io), EMNLP 2021 is easily one of the larger scientific conferences, unique in that it is promoting a fully democratic and equal experience for every attendee, with the notable exception that the online participants will not physically enjoy the beautiful Barceló Bávaro Convention Centre and surroundings in Punta Cana.
EMNLP 2021 Chairperson Marie-Francine Moens explained that “EMNLP has a long rich history of successful conferences that our community is looking forward to every year. We were hoping that by November 2021 much of the world would already be past the pandemic. As the situation is fluid and changing daily, we needed to find a way to hold the event so every participant and presenter would have a deeply engaging and satisfying experience, regardless of their ability to attend in person.”
Priscilla Rasmussen, ACL Chief Executive said “running a conference of this size is always challenging. This becomes infinitely more difficult during the pandemic; especially when our goal is to provide an equal, engaging, interactive experience that is seamless, whether you are in or virtual. Besides the technical challenges, people’s availability changes daily due to personal, health, and country mandates.
We are happy to partner with Underline to produce this conference since their platform and services will host much of the technical and organizational challenges both virtually and in-person.”
Alex Lazinica, CEO of Underline added “We are honored to work with ACL on EMNLP and their flagship conferences. Having produced Hybrid events of various kinds for many months, our team provides white-glove service and an unbeatable online platform to leading associations such as ACL, IEEE, and many others.”
