EACL 2021 Queer in AI Social

Queer in AI is throwing virtual socials at EACL 2021. People of all identities (including allies) are invited to attend. EACL registration is not required to attend the social.

Overview & How to Join

We are organizing two 1.5 hour socials. All socials will be in Queer in AI's gather town.

Social A: 10 AM GMT on Sunday, April 18th (convert to your timezone)

Social B: 5 PM GMT on Wednesday, April 21st (convert to your timezone)

To join, check-in by filling up this form.

Reach out to the organizers directly by emailing to queer-in-nlp@googlegroups.com.

Structure

The first 30 mins of the socials will include a presentation from the organizers, mini-speeches by the speakers and a word from our sponsors. The next hour of the social will consist of discussions (formal and informal) in small groups.

Queer in AI Buddy program

To strengthen the queer community, we are launching a buddy program this social. That means you will be paired up with a queer person and you can kiki with them in the conferences. We encourage signing up (form link above) especially if you are new to NLP conferences or queer spaces.

Speakers

Sarah Chander (she/her) [Social A speaker]: Sarah leads EDRi's policy work on AI and non-discrimination with respect to digital rights. She co-founded Brussels POC (community of (QTI)POC in Brussels) and Equinox (people of colour-led coalition working to advance rights and justice for all people in Europe).

Her talk will be about the work of civil society contesting harms to particular communities presented by the deployment of AI, including attempts to influence legislative conversations on AI from the perspective of queer and other marginalised communities. She will talk about the main arguments we face, but also the challenges we are encountering particularly in a wider policy environment that has been centred around fostering the innovative potential of AI and therefore the reluctance for rights-based safeguards. (Twitter: @sarahchander)

Allison Parrish (she/her) [Social B speaker]: Allison is a computer programmer, poet, educator and game designer whose teaching and practice address the unusual phenomena that blossom when language and computers meet. She is an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. Her first full-length book of computer-generated poetry, Articulations, was published by Counterpath in 2018. (Twitter: @aparrish)

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): 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)

Emi Baylor (she/her): MSc student at McGill University and Mila, Emi has been surviving this Montreal winter via the simple method of not leaving her apartment. When she’s not doing computational morphology research or working on low-resource NLP, you can generally catch her screen printing, making earrings, or working on episodes of her new podcast. (Twitter: @emibaylor)

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.

EACL 2021 adheres to the ACL 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 ACL Executive 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.

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