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Scientific Committee Minutes for November 2020

British Mathematical Colloquium Scientific Committee Minutes for the meeting of 10th November 2020, 1300–1500 on zoom

  1. Attendance

    Chair: Sarah Rees (Newcastle)
    LMS reps: Karin Baur (Leeds), Richard Thomas (Imperial)
    EMS rep: Sophie Huczynska (St Andrews)
    Lancaster 2019: Jan Grabowski
    Glasgow 2020, 2021: Michael Wemyss
    KCL 2022: Simon Salamon
    Ex officio:
    Caroline Wallace (Executive Secretary of the LMS), Elizabeth Fisher (LMS).
    Caroline Wallace was attending for the first time in her capacity as Ex- ecutive Secretary of LMS, was welcomed, and introduced herself to the committee. Karin Baur and Richard Thomas joined also for the first time, as new LMS reps. Jan Grabowski represented Lancaster for the final time (since the Lancaster BMC was the last one to take place), and Simon Salamon represented KCL (rather than David Burns, who was unable to attend), which will host in 2022. It would be normal at an autumn meeting of this committee to have a representative participant from the last BMC; since the Glasgow BMC was postponed by 12 months, there was of course no such representative.

  2. Apologies for absence

    No apologies were necessary since all appropriate representatives attended.

  3. Minutes of last Scientific Committee meeting at De Morgan House in September 2019

    Approved.

  4. Update on plans for Glasgow BMC/BAMC 6th 9th April 2021

    Michael Wemyss presented a report on Glasgow's plans, and responded
    to questions from the committee.

    As originally planned, the BMC had involved around 570 participants, around 350 of them speakers, and had a financial liability of 60–70 thousand pounds. There would have been a very attractive conference dinner, at Kelvingrove, with a ceilidh, and there would have been a crèche. The organisers had managed to cancel in good time, before they were forced to; hence they were able to avoid financial liability for the venue hire, for the conference dinner, and for hotel costs. However they remained liable for 10.5 thousand pounds to the ICMS, which had already provided significant administrative support. That debt has been absorbed into the new budget.

    The rescheduled BMC has now been moved entirely online, using dates that are exactly 12 months after the original dates. It would have been financially impossible to have attempted to plan a hybrid event.

    The rescheduled BMC will be run using Sococo; a few different plat- forms were considered, shadowed at various conferences in the sum- mer, and Sococo had been successfully used at a Mathematical Biology conference. It was seen to be good socially, and to interact well with zoom. There are costs of 16 pounds per person together with costs for technical and administrative support, which brings the costs up to around 28 pounds per person in total. ICMS is still heavily involved. A fair amount of technical and administrative support is necessary, since, for instance, it takes around a week to schedule all the zoom sessions necessary for the conference.
    The organisers have already contacted all session chairs and speakers, and have refunded registration (wholly or partially as appropriate) to 230 people. Registration should open this week, with the cost of early bird registration being 15 pounds. Somewhere between 500 and 2500 participants are expected.

    The programme is already published online. There has been as little change as possible. The same 9 breakout sessions have been maintained (organisation of those was already delegated). Where necessary the timetable has been adjusted to deal with speakers from different time zones. The public lecture has been maintained. There may be a need for more mini-symposia at the BAMC.

    The new budget is now 45–65 thousand pounds (depending on the number of participants) The payment owed to ICMS will be made.
    For most sessions, the capacity of zoom is adequate; for the public lecture will be run as a webinar.

    Advertising will go out soon. The committee was asked to publicise this rescheduled event.
    There was significant approval from the committee. Michael had cir- culated the programme and a video about Sococo to the committee in advance of the meeting.
    Richard Thomas suggested that Glasgow should contact local LMS reps, and ask them to help in some ways, and hence lighten the heavy load on Glasgow.

    In addition, Richard suggested that some departments might open up space within their buildings where they might stream plenary lectures.

    Elizabeth Fisher commented that she had relayed information on the Glasgow plans to the LMS Research Grants Committee for their com- ments.

    Simon Salamon (who will soon take on the rôle of LMS treasurer) said that he would be happy to help Glasgow communicate with LMS membership.
    Elizabeth Fisher commended that she could provide LMS membership lists to those who needed them (eg to LMS reps).

  5. Plans for BMC at King's College London 2022

    The 2022 BMC will be organised by a KCL committee chaired by David Burns. The event will be in the summer of 2022, probably in June, when it will be possible to use Bush house. It was noted that the ICM would be in August 2022.

  6. Future BMCs

    A very brief discussion of potential hosts beyond 2022.

    We have already agreed on Bath 2023 (Roger Moser), Manchester 2024 (Charles Eaton), and (tentatively) Exeter 2025 (amending pre- Covid agreements). It was commented that Exeter was probably not a big enough venue for a joint BMC/BAMC, but then observed that since the Glasgow joint event was now in 2021, it would be natural to schedule the next joint event for five years later, in 2026.

  7. Other meetings

    Update on YRM (Young Researchers in Mathematics) and BCTCS (British Colloquium in Theoretical Computer Science) 2021.

    Sarah Rees reported that the YRM was scheduled online for 7th–9th June 2021 in Bristol, run by Nirvana Coppola (https://sites.google.com/view/yrm-2020), and the BCTCS is currently scheuled to take place in person on 29th-31st March 2021 in Liverpool, organised by Patrick Totzke and Michele Zilo (https://intranet.csc.liv.ac.uk/~bctcs2021), with a decision on whether it should be moved online to be take at the end of January 2021.

  8. Date of next meeting

    This has yet to be scheduled, but will be at the Glasgow BMC. It was noted that the AGM at the BMC has already be scheduled for the Thursday at 1350.

  9. Any other business There was no further business.
Sarah Rees 11th November 2020