Re: [SIGLEX-MWE] call for participation: PARSEME meeting, 8-9 September 2014, Frankfurt am Main (relocated from Haifa, Israel)

[Valia K. <eva...@an...>]

Dear Adam,

I can understand that you must be very upset with the way things have
turned out, as your message shows, but I really cannot see why you should
attack me. At the end of the day, I am not the one discriminating against
anybody.

I think that what happened must be pretty clear by now. So this is also my
last message.

Have a nice (relocated) meeting.

Best regards,
Valia

On Wed, August 27, 2014 11:45, Adam Przepiorkowski wrote:
> Dear Valia,
>
>> Let me also add here a few more facts to the ones presented in your
>> message: in a personal communication (over a phone call) that I had with
>> the PARSEME PO, Dr. Stübner, in the last week of July (if I recall
>> correctly, it must've been on July 29), he said that the procedure for
>> the
>> relocation of the meeting was already at that point in time well under
>> way, in the sense, as he mentioned, that people were busy finding
>> meeting
>> rooms and hotels.
>
> I can't be held responsible for the views of the COST Office.  As to
> PARSEME chairs, we left the options open until the very end of the
> voting – no commitmens were made before that day.
>
>> During the last 3-4 weeks there have been messages to me from MC members
>> in which people have been expressing confusion on what the justification
>> basis of the vote for the relocation is.
>
> I can fully understand that – I've been confused myself.
>
>> As you may understand, the additional pieces of the story mentioned here
>> do raise questions on the reasons of the decided and implemented now
>> relocation.
>
> Valia, as you probably very well know, PARSEME chairs originally asked
> Shuly Wintner to organise a meeting in Haifa and then, when he agreed,
> the PARSEME MC voted for this location (there were two bids, Haifa got
> more votes than the other one).  So I am really not sure what you are
> implying – please be explicit.  Again, I don't know what the reasoning
> in the COST Office was, but within PARSEME itself the procedure has been
> fully transparent and – until well into the voting period – many of us
> (certainly including the chairs of the Action) hoped we would be able to
> maintain the original meeting location.
>
> I can very well understand that you bitterly regret that the meeting was
> relocated.  But this is really not a reason to blindly start blaming
> everybody around for this move.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Adam P.
>
> P.S. My apologies again to this list for the length of this thread.
> This is my last post on this topic.
>
>
>
>> On Wed, August 27, 2014 00:23, Adam Przepiorkowski wrote:
>>> Dear Valia,
>>>
>>> Let me jump in as the vice chair of PARSEME COST Action (the OP, Agata
>>> Savary, is the chair).
>>>
>>>> since you're using the list for the advertisement of the specific
>>>> event,
>>>> please, be so kind and inform the participants of this mailing list
>>>> about
>>>> the reasons for the last minute relocation of the meeting from Haifa
>>>> to
>>>> Frankfurt.
>>>
>>> Thanks for bringing the issue of relocating the event to the attention
>>> of the members of this list.  This is an important case of science
>>> meetings politics – and such an encounter is never a good thing, as I
>>> remember from my student years in the communist Poland.
>>>
>>> The meeting was indeed planned at first to take place in Haifa and the
>>> great majority of PARSEME members (certainly including the PARSEME
>>> chairs) were very much looking forward to it.  Unfortunately, when the
>>> Gaza conflict escalated, the COST Office issued on 24 July 2014 a
>>> recommendation to relocate the meeting, with a rather strong wording,
>>> including phrases “the COST Association strongly recommends to relocate
>>> the meeting” and, especially:
>>>
>>> “In the case that the Management Committee despite this
>>> recommendation insists to run the meeting in Israel in September or in
>>> any nearby future, in which the situation in Israel has not
>>> significantly relaxed, the COST Association disclaims any liability
>>> whatsoever towards the meeting participants for damages, financial or
>>> other, which are associated with this meeting. This includes any
>>> damages, financial or other, in the case of the cancellation of the
>>> meeting, if needed, at a later stage. Furthermore, please be informed
>>> that in the case the Action continues to implement the meeting in
>>> Israel
>>> the COST Association will ask the Action to provide from every single
>>> participant a signed letter stating, that the participant will not try
>>> to make the COST Association liable for any damage, financial or other,
>>> associated with the meeting.”
>>>
>>> We, the chairs of PARSEME, had no other option but to ask the
>>> Management
>>> Committee (MC) members to vote on the relocation.  We hoped that the
>>> escalation of the conflict would end in a few days (as it used to in
>>> the
>>> past) and we gave a pretty long voting time, until 20 August, hoping
>>> that we would maintain the original location.  (I can say that openly
>>> now, as it won't influence the results of the voting any longer.)
>>> Unfortunately, the escalation didn't subside within days and – again,
>>> given the strong wording of the “recommendation” – many members of the
>>> PARSEME MC simply felt they had no choice but to vote for the
>>> relocation
>>> of the meeting.  In fact, many votes for relocating the meeting where
>>> accompanied by comments expressing the regret that the meeting had to
>>> be
>>> moved to a different location.
>>>
>>> I was very much looking forward to the meeting in Haifa and I feel that
>>> this development is very unfortunate – and I know many people
>>> (including
>>> you, Valia, I assume) share this sentiment.  Nevertheless, seeing that
>>> the results of the vote are bound to be to relocate the meeting, I got
>>> in touch with Prof. Manfred Sailer of the University of Frankfurt am
>>> Main (Institut für England- und Amerikastudien), who's also the leader
>>> of one of the PARSEME working groups, and asked whether it would be
>>> possible to organise the meeting on the original dates (8–9 September
>>> 2014) in Frankfurt, which is rather easy to get to from many locations
>>> in Europe.  Prof. Sailer generously agreed to give it a try and, with
>>> the help of a number of people at Frankfurt (Manfred Sailer, Frank
>>> Richter, Gert Webelhuth), the relocation has been successful.  The
>>> original programme of the meeting is more-or-less preserved, and we
>>> already received a large number of confirmations of the intent to
>>> participate (including from the organisers of the Haifa meeting).  I
>>> hope, Valia, that you – any many other members of this list – will also
>>> make it to Frankfurt.
>>>
>>> All best,
>>>
>>> Adam P.
>>>
>>>
>>> P.S. Apologies for the length of this e-mail, but I realised that the
>>> relocation of the meeting has caused some concern, so I thought it
>>> would
>>> make sense to explain the situation in some detail.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Tue, August 26, 2014 21:49, Agata Savary wrote:
>>>>> CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
>>>>>
>>>>> PARSEME COST Action IC1207 meeting
>>>>> 8–9 September 2014
>>>>> Frankfurt am Main, Germany (relocated from Haifa, Israel)
>>>>>
>>>>> http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/parseme/index.php/event/meetings/95-frankfurt-workshop-on-mwes-8-9-september-2014-frankfurt-germany-relocated-from-haifa
>>>>>
>>>>> PARSEME COST Action IC1207 (www.parseme.eu) is dedicated to parsing
>>>>> and
>>>>> multi-word expressions.
>>>>> It gathers multidisciplinary experts from 30 countries. It is
>>>>> structured
>>>>> in four Working Groups:
>>>>> WG1: Lexicon/Grammar Interface
>>>>> WG2: Parsing Techniques for MWEs
>>>>> WG3: Statistical, Hybrid and Multilingual Processing of MWEs
>>>>> WG4: Annotating MWEs in Treebanks
>>>>>
>>>>> The third general meeting of PARSEME, initially planned at the
>>>>> University
>>>>> of Haifa (Israel), will take place on 8–9 September 2014 at the
>>>>> University
>>>>> of Frankfurt am Main (Germany). The meeting will start on Monday
>>>>> 8.09.2014
>>>>> morning with plenary
>>>>> sessions, and will continue on Monday p.m. and Tuesday 9.09.2014 with
>>>>> poster sessions and partly parallel Working Group (WG) sessions.
>>>>>
>>>>> The preliminary program, including the list of accepted posters, is
>>>>> available at:
>>>>> http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/parseme/index.php/event/meetings/95-frankfurt-workshop-on-mwes-8-9-september-2014-frankfurt-germany-relocated-from-haifa
>>>>>
>>>>> PARSEME members (who have received formal invitations) will be
>>>>> reimbursed
>>>>> for their travel and stay.
>>>>> Participation for other external persons is free. If you are
>>>>> interested,
>>>>> please, contact the local organizers before 3 September.
>>>>>
>>>>> Local organizers:
>>>>> Manfred Sailer and Gert Webelhuth - Goethe Universität Frankfurt am
>>>>> Main
>>>>>
>>>>> Local organizer for the initial venue:
>>>>> Shuly Wintner - University of Haifa
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Multiword-expressions mailing list
>>>>> Mul...@li...
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----------------------------------------
>>>> PD Dr. Valia Kordoni
>>>> Institut  für  Anglistik  und  Amerikanistik
>>>> Humboldt-Universität Berlin
>>>> Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin
>>>> Raum: 2108
>>>> Tel.:  +49/302093-2421    Fax: -2244
>>>> ----------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Slashdot TV.
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>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Multiword-expressions mailing list
>>>> Mul...@li...
>>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/multiword-expressions
>>>
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------
>> PD Dr. Valia Kordoni
>> Institut  für  Anglistik  und  Amerikanistik
>> Humboldt-Universität Berlin
>> Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin
>> Raum: 2108
>> Tel.:  +49/302093-2421    Fax: -2244
>> ----------------------------------------
>>
>
> --
> Prof. Adam Przepiórkowski                     ˈadam ˌpʃɛpjurˈkɔfskʲi
> http://clip.ipipan.waw.pl/ _____ Computational Linguistics in Poland
> http://jlm.ipipan.waw.pl/ ____________ Journal of Language Modelling
> http://zil.ipipan.waw.pl/ _____________ Linguistic Engineering Group
> http://nkjp.pl/ __________________________ National Corpus of Polish
>
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>


----------------------------------------
PD Dr. Valia Kordoni
Institut  für  Anglistik  und  Amerikanistik
Humboldt-Universität Berlin
Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin
Raum: 2108
Tel.:  +49/302093-2421    Fax: -2244
----------------------------------------