European Language Resources Association
Chief Executive
The newly formed European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
invites applications for the position of Chief Executive.
ELRA was established in February 1995, with the encouragement of the
European Commission, to promote the development and exploitation of
Language Resources (LR) for the European languages. The role of the
non-profit Association is to promote the production of LR and to
collect, validate, and make them available to users It will gather
information on market needs and encourage the Commission and other
funding bodies to support the development of the LR most urgently
needed. Language Resources include all data necessary for language
engineering, such as monolingual and multilingual lexica, text
corpora, speech databases and terminologies.
The Association has members drawn from every country in the European
Union and expects to attract subscribers from throughout the world. At
present, ELRA is financed from membership fees and grants; in the
future the Association will derive income from the sale of licences to
users world wide. After an initial start-up period of four years, it
is planned that the Association will be financially independent and
self-supporting.
The Association is seeking a Chief Executive to manage the activities
of the Association. This person is likely to be an independent
individual who, after appointment, will recruit a small team. Or he or
she might be part of an existing organisation such as his or her own
small company whose activities do not conflict with those of the
Association. As well as the small full-time team the Chief Executive
will be able to obtain advice from specialists. He or she will report
to the ELRA Board. The first task will be to recruit the team and
establish an office at a suitable location within the European Union,
and to start, without delay, on the priority activities for collecting
and distributing Language Resources.
Responsibilities
The Association is seeking a Chief Executive to:
* Oversee the day-to-day operations of the Association, and
implement the business plan of the Board
* Manage a small support team and create an infrastructure for the
collection, validation, and licensing of LR.
* Implement licensing agreements for Language Resources
* Promote the Association world-wide
* Interact with the relevant players (i.e.: producers, owners and
users of LR who may be in the industrial, commercial or academic
world; and governmental and non-governmental agencies)
Qualifications
The successful candidate will have:
* A proven record of running a small organisation
* Extensive experience in marketing language resources, software or
other forms of intellectual property
* Knowledge of and experience with intellectual property issues
* Citizenship of, or residency papers for an EU country
* Ability to work in at least two European languages is essential
* Experience in the domain of language engineering is desirable.
Terms and conditions of employment will be subject to negotiation but
will be commensurate with the responsibilities of the post, and will
include performance-based incentives.
Application
Further information is available about the Chief Executive post and
the Association from the Membership Secretary, contact: Sarah Houston
(Tel: + 352 46 91 61, Fax: + 352 46 91 61,
Email:100126@1262@compuserve.com).
Applicants should send a cover letter addressing the points listed
above, together with a current Curriculum Vitae, to:
Brian Oakley
Chairman of the Steering Committee
120 Reigate Road, Ewell, Epsom, Surrey, KT17 3BX, UK
Tel: + 44 181 393 4096
Fax: + 44 181 393 0547
Closing date for applications: 7 June 1995.