COLING 2020 Queer in AI Social

Queer in AI is throwing virtual social (using Zoom) at COLING 2020. People of all identities (including allies) are invited to attend. This social will have a focus on computational and queer linguistics.

Overview & How to Join

We are organizing a virtual 2 hour social on December 8 at 7 pm CET, which will be held on Zoom.

Time: 10 am San Francisco / 1 pm New York / 6 pm London / 11.30 pm Delhi [Click on this link to convert into your timezone]

To join, please check in here.

Speakers

Nyx McLean (they/them): Nyx McLean is a caffeine-fuelled transgender non-binary queer academic, who wakes up every morning wondering why the heck their cats have not yet figured out how to make coffee. Nyx is based at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa and occupies the coveted position as the only queer and transdiscipinary (extra emphasis on the trans) scholar in their department. (Twitter: @NyxMcLean)

Nyx will be speaking to what the internet and digital technologies can offer transgender and non-binary folk in the way of forming spaces of safety and belonging.

Vasundhara (she/xe/they): Vasundhara is a queer brown woman who gets excited about language, code and birds. She currently works as a Speech Recognition Engineer at Dialpad on language modelling, the lexicon, and improving the transcription of keywords, names and numbers. She spends her free time doing pandemic things (piano, walks, reading, and gaming)! (Twitter: @VasundharaNLP)

Vasundhara will talk about how finally accepting the fluidity of xyr attraction liberated xem to accept and embrace fluidity in other realms of xyr life - including xyr identity as an Indian Canadian by way of Singapore, bendy gender, and categorical variables in research. Through xyr slides and stories, you'll meet the key people in xyr life who introduced xem to the gay agenda, making xem eventually succumb to the gravity well of xyr own queerness.

Ártemis López (they/elle) is a non-binary PhD Candidate in Linguistics at the Universidade de Vigo, where they research non-binary Spanish and the translation of queer and non-binary identities. They have fulfilled their New Year's resolutions of the past three years and are looking for suggestions for 2021! (Twitter: @queerterpreter)

Their talk will be about non-binary expression in Spanish, which has binary grammatical gender, and how this binary can be challenged beyond non-binary expression to engage in radical linguistic activism.

Call for Volunteers

We are looking for volunteers for Queer in AI socials. The volunteer positions include moderating, livetweeting, organizing dry runs and so on. The estimated time commitment is around 2-4 hours around the conference dates.

We also have other positions include conference-specific volunteers, workshop organizers, and some of our planned initiatives.

Upon filling up this form you get to join Queer in AI's slack where you can meet our awesome team of volunteers and brainstorm with them in our fortnightly meetings.

Financial Aid

Queer in AI is offering financial aid for queer researchers to attend the virtual COLING 2020 conference. The funding includes financial aid for registration, internet connection, VPN and so on.

You can fill out COLING funding form in order to apply for financial aid.

Organizers

For any concerns or questions, please reach out to any of us either on Rocketchat or our contact info given in our websites. Your concerns will be kept confidential.

Sabine Weber (she/her) (Host): She is a queer PhD student at the University of Edinburgh researching predicate entailment while being annoyed about the lack of multilingual tools. Her office has a unicorn. In her free time she misses Berlin, naps and makes lino print art. (Twitter: @multilingual_s)

Luca Soldaini (he/him) is an Applied Scientist at Amazon, where he works on QA models to make sure that Alexa can respond to questions such as "Who is the best dancer in RuPaul Drag Race?". His research interests include generative and ranking models for spoken language understanding systems. In his free time, he enjoys running, dreaming about utopian mass transit systems, and curating his laptop stickers collection. (Twitter: @soldni)

Pranav A (he/they): Determined to make everything chaotic and gay, Pranav has received complaints from his neighbours for performing lame lipsyncs in the lifts and has injured his back while trying a sickening deathdrop. In the mornings at Sentinel AI, he designs radical AI systems to identify and flag disinformation campaigns against queer people, and in the nights, he researches on multilingual multitask multimodal systems. (Twitter: @QueerZoomer)

Code of Conduct

Please read Queer in AI code of conduct which will be strictly followed in the social. Recording (screen recording or screenshots) is prohibited. All participants are expected to maintain the confidentiality of the members.

COLING 2020 adheres to the COLING Anti-Harassment Policy and Queer in AI adheres to Queer in AI Anti-harassment policy. Any participant who experiences harassment or hostile behavior may contact any current member of the COLING Local Organization Committee or contact Queer in AI Safety Team. Please be assured that if you approach us, your concerns will be kept in strict confidence, and we will consult with you on any actions taken.

Platinum Sponsors

Silver Sponsors

Credits for the Pride ACL logo: Cassidy Henry and Emma Manning from this thread.