First established in 1965, the International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING) is one of the premier conferences for natural language processing and computational linguistics. Attracting leaders around the world, COLING gives the research community the chance to showcase exciting advancements and discoveries in the AI research space.

COLING is usually a biennial event, hosted in a different location every year. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has complicated many an in-person conference already, pushing organizations to adapt and innovate to become and remain virtually accessible. Even with technology working to catch up with the demand, it still left many to wonder if big events like COLING 2022 were still going to happen. Thanks to Underline and their unmatched prowess in streaming and event hosting, the event was a success!

Organizers decided that at this point, it was safe to put on the event in Gyeongju, South Korea. However, in order to accommodate more attendees—and those who still had Covid-19 concerns—COLING 2022 partnered with Underline to pull off a hybrid event. COLING hosted guests on-site, and also offered a synchronous virtual component for guests who couldn’t attend in person.

How Does COLING 2022 Impact the Research Community?

COLING is one of the biggest events for the research community; simply cancelling the function was seemingly not an option. It served as an avenue for researchers and scientists all over the world to meet, discuss, and share their work and ideas with each other. This year’s hybrid conference helped to mitigate Covid-19 concerns—while also expanding the event’s reach to a wider segment of the research community.

Hybrid events seem to be the future across a variety of fields, not just computational linguistics or even research. The strategy combines the best of physical and virtual events. Between in-person networking and virtual community spaces, it permits for the same “boots on the ground” networking opportunities as a traditional conference. During the conference, for example, attendees often stayed back after oral sessions to continue informal discussions with their peers about their takeaways, current projects, and overall experiences.

Additionally, because of the virtual components of this year’s conference, the pool of researchers who could participate extended far beyond the capacity of strictly in-person events. This time around, even those with budget constraints or otherwise occupied with their own research halfway around the world could still participate.

"Success is built through failure and reiteration, but an essential part is also different perspectives - nothing informs your work more than somebody else looking at the same thing you’re looking at, but seeing something completely different. Because of this, at such conferences like COLING 2022, you can hear “Ah! We haven’t thought of that! We will look into it.” which only enforces the notion of how collaborative science is.."

In fact, this year’s schedule was one of the most extensive. The program featured 19 workshops in total—11 of which were hybrid, and the other eight fully virtual. With this range of topics and mediums, Underline considers this Gyeongju iteration of COLING one of the most successful yet. Not only did it discuss the technical and scientific aspects of computational linguistics and natural language processing, but the workshops also covered its practical applications on literature, cultural heritage, humanities, social sciences, and more.

Key Presentations in COLING 2022

Thanks to Underline’s help, the 29th COLING unfolded in Gyoengju without a hitch this year. Participants, speakers, and sponsors were able to navigate the hybrid environment effortlessly all conference long, so that everyone could participate equally. It’s been a long two years, with a whole pandemic in the interim. Participants had a lot to catch up on—and Underline helped them do so.

Given the variety of events that occurred, some at the same time, the virtual aspects of COLING 2022 were all the more necessary. For one, having pre-recorded content available before the conference gave authors and attendees ample time and opportunity to watch, read, and comment on the line-up of topics. Two, attendees can plan ahead and make sure they get to attend the presentations they’re most interested in or catch up with the proceedings if they missed the live sessions.

Most importantly, with the content available on Underline’s site, papers are made accessible to a larger audience. Whether or not they were able to attend in-person, people have a chance to watch live recordings and read the papers on their own time. In turn, most importantly, communication between members of the scientific community continues, long after the conferences has ended.

COLING 2022 featured a number of particularly enlightening speakers and topics, including these big names in the AI research and linguistics community. These six conference speakers presented their individual findings on the development of spoken language technologies.

The first day of the Gyeongju conference featured Dr. Martha Palmer from the University of Colorado as a keynote speaker on deep semantics in AI. This was followed by Dr. Rachel Edita Oñate Roxas’ talk on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Dr. Ping Li’s presentation on computational language learning.

The day after, keynote speaker Dr. Kentaro Inui from Tohoku University discussed the explainability in automated writing evaluation highlighting recent research trends. On the fourth day of the conference, Dr. Helen Meng spoke about her paper on AI for dementia detection. Last but not least, Pompeu Fabra University’s Dr. Marco Baroni was featured as a keynote speaker on the utility of machine-to-machine communication.

In addition to these six presenters, the Gyeongju iteration of the COLING conference featured a series of ongoing “Grand Challenge” discussions, oral sessions, poster presentations, industry sessions, workshops, and tutorials. This included an array of interdisciplinary topics including the fields of engineering, geriatrics, linguistics, neurology, psychology, and public health.

Because of the vast amount of opportunities for learning and peer discussion, it was all the more important to ensure that attendees could participate and provide feedback whether online or on-site. So while the keynote speakers focused on current findings on AI and language processing, this variety of sessions hosted at the conference facilitated informal discussions between attendees, both in-person and virtually, that may not have happened otherwise.

Across all these talks and discussions, the Underline team found the in-person industry sessions the most compelling as conference attendees. They showed off the hard work of the researchers, especially how they come to light and become part of everyday lives, which can be very motivating for young scientists.

The few days revolving around the conference can pass by all too quickly, and even with prior planning, attendees may not be able to make it to every talk and presentation they want to go to. What Underline can provide them is on-demand access to recordings of any presentations they missed, along with continued virtual engagement with the speakers.

Behind the Scenes of COLING 2022 with Underline

Producing a hybrid event like the Gyeongju conference is no easy task. Indeed, these events take intricate planning, especially if one wants to plan full accessibility for all attendees. Most organizers resort to simply planning two separate events in these situations; however, while it may be simpler, such an approach also makes it near-impossible to offer all attendees the same experience.

Underline stepped in to solve this problem and shape an event with unparalleled synchronicity for this year’s COLING. The primary focus was to ensure that all attendees—both onsite and virtual—got the chance to experience talks from some of the leading experts in their field.

"...our main task is to make sure the virtual segment of the conference is flawless. But we do go an extra mile in making sessions inclusive so that remote attendees have an almost in-person experience of the conference as well as those attending in-person to acknowledge the value of the papers and questions coming from the remote participants."

That said, these details, logistics, and technicalities to make this happen can be notoriously tricky to sync up in tandem.

For example, there’s the extensive camera work needed to deliver a compelling live stream and the number of bodies needed in the crew to do two events simultaneously. How does one handle comments and questions from online viewers? Do they mesh with the live attendees? The hybrid event poses a host of questions and potential challenges.

Conferences can be a very unpredictable environment, and as a team member recounts, “nerves sometimes take the best out of everybody (and in this case, presentation equipment)”—understandably so. To provide some context, Underline’s events team normally uses a three-computer set-up, with one each for production, the session chair, and the presenter.

During one of the in-person sessions, the presenter wanted to use their own laptop for their live session. In the frenzy of hooking up their computer to the presentation set-up, they accidentally ended up disconnecting their laptop and pulling all the cables out. This resulted in the laptop freezing up and essentially rendering the next presenters unable to do their own sessions. Thankfully, a simple laptop swap resolved the issue and the presentations carried on without major delays or on-the-spot troubleshooting.

Technical difficulties and mishaps due to stage fright are major parts of why COLING turned to Underline for help. Well-experienced in hosting video research libraries and events, streaming the Gyeongju conference was no problem for the platform.

"Organizing a large-scale event is not an easy task and requires a lot of planning. Having all that shifted into a hybrid mode makes it even more challenging. With our constant support, suggestions and execution, I strongly believe that organizers, after the initial feeling of insecurity, felt comfortable with the virtual segment of the conference."

Underline hosted the entire virtual schedule on its platform—including pre-recorded presentations and live-streamed keynote speeches from thought leaders around the world.

More than the technical aspects of enabling hybrid accessibility for a global-scale event like COLING 2022, Underline worked as closely with the speakers and presenters just as they did with the program chairs.

Aside from going the extra mile to make sure virtual participants could participate at the same level as in-person attendees, the technical team ensured that attendees from around the world had as close to an immersive experience as those in the room.

Underline’s team members also did a fair bit of coaching with presenters to calm their nerves and boost their confidence before they went up on the stage. This included reassurances that their slides were uploaded and working properly, accepting and implementing last-minute changes, physical tours around the room, and even a mini dry run of the session.

Given how unpredictable conferences can be, some of the team were also recruited to help bring in more chairs and carry tables to the stage, and even take photos to make sure each session was documented. At one point, due to unforeseen circumstances, Underline had to look for and bring another person to act as session chair five minutes before the scheduled time.

The wild success of this year’s COLING shows for other conferences considering hybrid plans—it’s doable for you too in capable hands! In an increasingly decentralized, digital world, hybrid communications are the way of the future. coling 2022 partnered with underline to make this hybrid event a success.