[Lingtyp] New ACL Special Interest Group for Endangered Languages (SIGEL) -> invitation to join

[Antti Arppe]

[Apologies for cross-postings]

Dear colleagues,

The proposal for a new ACL Special Interest Group for Endangered 
Languages (ACL-SIGEL or SIGEL, for short) has been approved by the 
Executive of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). Thus, 
we are now inviting people with an interest in SIGEL to join and become 
its members.

1. PURPOSE
The purpose of SIGEL, as specified in its approved constitution, is "to 
foster computationally grounded research in all useful aspects in 
documenting, processing, revitalizing and supporting endangered 
languages, as well as minority, Indigenous and low-resource languages."

2. WEBSITE and EMAIL CONTACT
More information about SIGEL, with the full constitution, as well as 
eventual updates on its forth-coming activities, can now be found on our 
new website:

https://acl-sigel.github.io/

SIGEL can be reached at: acl.sigel at gmail.com

2. INVITATION FOR SIGEL MEMBERSHIP
At this point, we are asking interested people to join and become 
members in SIGEL, by:

a. responding to this email: acl.sigel+subscribe at gmail.com, or

b. joining our mailing list: sigel+subscribe at googlegroups.com.

Please note that membership in SIGEL does NOT require ACL membership.

3. CHANNELS for INVITATIONS to JOIN --> ANY MORE?
Feel free to spread the word within your own organizations or to 
colleagues who might be interested.

4. INTERIM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
In order to get SIGEL started, the members of the Organizing Committee 
of the ComputEL-3 Workshop will act as the Interim Executive Committee 
for SIGEL, until we will hold proper elections by the summer of this 
year, according to the stipulations of the SIGEL constitution.

5. INITIAL ACTIVITIES
As our initial activities, we are endorsing the 1st Joint SLTU and CCURL 
Workshop (SLTU-CCURL 2020: http://sltu-ccurl-2020.ilc.cnr.it/), a 
pre-conference Workshop of LREC 2020 (https://lrec2020.lrec-conf.org/en/).
    Also, we are in the process of starting the organization of the next 
ComputEL workshop, to take place in 2021. More details will be sent out 
as soon as we have fixed them. In addition, we welcome suggestions about 
other activities that SIGEL should consider undertaking, such that 
broadly fit under the purposes of SIGEL. Furthermore, if you are 
interested in taking an active part in SIGEL, please let us know.

On behalf of the interim Executive Board of SIGEL,

	-Antti Arppe (Interim president)
	Mans Hulden (Interim secretary)
	Alexis Palmer (Interim members-at-large)
	Jeff Good
	Jordan Lachler
	Lane Schwartz
	Miikka Silfverberg
----