MacTutor
Organising the BMC
This is a document providing information for the BMC committee and local organisers of BMCs (updated by BMC committee, October 2022).
The BMC Scientific Committee
The BMC Scientific Committee consists of a Chair, the LMS Executive Secretary and Programme Secretary, representatives of the memberships of the LMS and EMS, and one organiser of each BMC that is being planned or has just happened. The Chair operates for a period of three years, taking over at a BMC. In the months before this changeover, the 'next' Chair is selected by the 'previous' chair with help of one or two members on the 'current' committee.
The committee meets twice a year, once at the BMC itself, mainly to discuss preliminary impressions, and then in September/October at De Morgan House or (since the pandemic) on zoom, to receive reports and feedback on the preceding BMC, and discuss future BMC locations and general BMC management questions.
The BMC archive
The Mactutor archive for the BMC is held at St Andrews, at
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/BMC/
and is maintained by John O'Connor and Edmund Robertson (both retired from St Andrews).
It contains a complete list of BMCs from 1949 onwards, and some information on each, in general containing copies of the programme, minutes of the General Meeting of the BMC, and of the committee meetings of the BMC Scientific Committee. In particular, the minutes of the Autumn meeting of the BMC Scientific Committee will contain a report on the BMC that took place in the Spring/Summer of that year.
For ease of reference, we include here the current list of recent and future BMCs:
2019 Lancaster, 2021 (postponed from 2020, due to pandemic) Glasgow, 2022 KCL, 2023 Bath, 2024 Manchester, 2025 Exeter.
Organisation of the BMC, the host department's perspective
Year n - 3
Agree to host the BMC in year n. Establish an organising committee (typically two people).
Make sure that your institution is on your side; hosting of the BMC needs to be seen by the host department as an opportunity to showcase the institution and its mathematics, and an honour, not a chore. The amount of work involved also needs to be acknowledged. It would be good for the organisers to have some administrative support from their institution, and not to have to pay exhorbitant room charges.
Consult the BMC archive for information on previous events, and make and maintain contact with previous organisers.
There is an expectation that previous organisers will share details of where they found sponsorship additional to the LMS grant, and how much.
Start to think about tasks for year n - 2.
Year n - 2
Decide dates and if possible book lecture theatres, workshop sessions rooms, lunch and coffee facilities, accommodation if being used.
Invite plenary speakers, including one for the public lecture, and one for the 'LMS lecture' (speaker to be agreed with the LMS) which is part of an official LMS meeting with 'the members book' available for signing
Invite morning speakers and decide on the workshop sessions (these usually reflect departmental expertise).
Decide how to encourage PhD students and other ECRs to attend the BMC. Consider using 'speed lectures', poster sessions.
Some BMCs have had panel discussions on current hot topics eg EPSRC policies and open access publishing. For example, St Andrews had 6 plenary lectures, 12 morning speakers (in pairs), one public lecture, and 5 parallel workshop sessions. Consider having LMS Scheme 3 groups meeting on the Friday of the same week (St Andrews had several), after the BMC itself will have finished.
Good gender balance of plenary and morning speakers is very important -- in general and certainly to the LMS.
Decide on registration fee (including 'early bird' fee), and how to budget for costs of room hire, lunches and coffees, etc.
Bid to LMS Research Grants Committee for funding -- discuss with Ben Lloyd at the LMS the best time to do this (they treat the BMC funding as a special case). Other funders to consider include Clay Math Institute, Compositio Mathematica Foundation, Heilbronn Institute, EMS, Glasgow Math Journal Trust Fund, ...
Ideally at least one organiser of each future meeting should come to each BMC in years n - 2 and n - 1.
In year n - 2 the announcement of the location in year n will be made at the short meeting which is the BMC AGM, and there is also a meeting of the BMC Scientific Committee. Being present at that meeting in year n - 2 will alert organisers to many matters of detail.
Year n - 1
Final negotiations with speakers and preparation of programme documentation. Set up BMC website, so it can go live in September/October. Invite publishers: CUP, OUP, LMS, AMS, Springer etc. They like to be in a central location.
Year n
Traditionally the BMC has been held in March/April, but more recently, for practical reasons, it has sometimes been held in June; eg in 2018 at St Andrews, 2022 at KCL. Recently the BMC and BAMC have been held jointly in years divisible by 5 (eg in Glasgow 2020/1, Exeter 2025).
Academic and financial reports need to be sent to the LMS Research Grants Committee -- the academic part of report will be published on St Andrews MacTutor website as a record of eg speakers, events, numbers, budgets, at least within the minutes of this committee's meetings.
It is the responsibility of the Chair to send copies of the minutes of the General meeting and of the Scientific Committee meetings to St Andrews so that they can be included in the archive.