Great post Hal, and very timely as we start to consider such issues for NAACL 2019. I think disclosing conflicts of interest between those who are doing the inviting and those being invited (be they speakers, panelists, etc.) is really important, as are identifying conflicts of interest that might exist amongst the members of a panel or other invited group. These should be stated up front when making those initial lists of possible invitees, and then if someone is invited who does have a COI with a person involved in the invitation then that should be disclosed when promoting the event. This isn't always bad or even unexpected (person A studied with famous interesting speaker B, A invites B, B accepts gives a great talk, ...) but it seems perilous to not consider COI in making these invites since even the appearance of a buddy network undermines a lot of what we are trying to do. Also, it seems like explicitly seeking out folks who don't have any COIs with those doing the inviting will help us look beyond our usual boundaries.