On May 31 2003 a workshop was held on the analysis of geographic references as part of NAACL-HLT 2003 in Edmonton, Alberta. The engineers and researchers gathered there had a strong sense that they would want to continue as a community. While the original plan was to become a special interest group of the ACL (provisionally named SIGGEO), after some reflection the organizers felt they felt that a more lightweight "birds of a feather" organization is more appropriate: for the charter document see GEOBOF.

Last updated Sept 30 2003