Notes from SIAM Activity Group on Discrete Mathematics Business Meeting
June 13, 2000 Minneapolis
The number of people present during the business meeting varied from 20 to 25 with some coming and going throughout. The meeting began around 6 (after rearranging tables and chairs) and ended shortly before 7.
The Group Chair, Mike Albertson began by thanking the organizing committee for doing such a good job on the current conference. He then presented an outline for the business meeting. The first two items were feedback on the current conference and suggestions for the next conference. Two other items were discussion on mentoring and a possible web based journal.
Item 1: Feedback on current conference. Some of these items are also related to planning future meetings, item 2 below.
The following items were brought up (in order of discussion). It should be noted that throughout there was general agreement that the organizers did a great job for this conference. All of the passing positive comments are not recorded if they did not fit directly into the feedback discussion.
There should be free beer. (Other discussions heard by the secretary during the meeting paralled this, suggestions/complaints regarding lack of juices, snacks etc during coffee.)
It was noted that the timing of minisymposia and contributed sessions was such that the break between talks often did not coincide, making moving between talks of the two types of sessions more complicated. One suggested response was to make minisymposia talks twice the length of contributed talks. Other suggestions were to start/end sessions at differing times to make talk breaks coincide or to make length of breaks between talks vary from minisymposia to contributed talks.
There was a comment (passed on anonymously from an organizer of a minisymposium) regarding the fact that minisymposia speakers and organizers had to pay as much in registration fees (or more) than activity group members. There was considerable discussion. It was suggested that part of the problem was due to communication; invited main speakers do have their way paid, invited speakers at minisymposia are more like speakers at AMS special sessions, invited but not principal speakers. It should be made more clear to organizers of minisymposia and speakers at minisymposia that there is at most a small reduction on registration fees and this is not the sort of invitation that carries substantial financial support. It was suggested that such communication is important to avoid hard feelings as well as avoiding the perception that SIAM is a business as opposed to a professional society. Finally there was some discussion that reduced registration fees for minisymposia speakers and organizers might at least match those of activity group members and for activity group members there might be some additional reduction.
There was a suggestion of another type of minisymposia format, which would be much more of a tutorial nature. There was some positive response to this. It was also noted that for this year the minisymposia instructions intended that the first speaker of the session (or perhaps a preceding invited talk) would give an overview or introduction to the subject (so somewhat tutorial at least for the first talk). This occurred with varying degrees of success. It was also noted that there a good job was done in having sessions similar to invited talks follow directly after them.
A comment was made regarding publicity of this conference. It was reported that a non SIAM member who attended the SIAM discrete mathematics conference two years ago did not receive any notice of the current conference and was surprised by this. The SIAM representative responded that attendees from previous conferences are usually notified but that sometimes addresses change. It was commented that in marketing notice needs to be sent seven times before people to make sure people get the message. The SIAM representative reported that paper mailing are expensive and that there has been concern from the SIAM board regarding sending out too many mass emails. So perhaps notification of this conference was a bit limited. The SIAM board is discussing appropriate levels of mass emails and this will be taken into account in the future.
It was suggested that future conferences be held were dorm rooms are available for a cheaper housing alternative. It was noted that at this conference dorms were available, but only for students due to constraints on having enough people using the hotel.
It was suggested that perhaps future conferences might be adjacent to Saturday night (start Sunday morning or end Saturday night or include Saturday and Sunday) to allow easier access to cheaper Saturday night airfares. Comments noted that this has been done in the past, that this year the Saturday night stay did not seem to create a much a price differential as in the past and that Saturday nights might also create conflicts for some in family time versus cost.
It was suggested that perhaps some sort of proceedings be published. Discussion noted that past conference abstracts are archived on the SIAM web site and that some have references. There was some discussion that perhaps this mechanism could be used with speakers encouraged to post at least reference lists or links to their work.
Item 2: Planning for the next conference.
Discussion of planning for the next conference began with the SIAM representative noting that the 50th annual SIAM meeting will be held in Philadelphia in early July 2002. The representative encouraged the activity group to consider having the next discrete mathematics conference parallel to or shortly before the annual meeting in Philadelphia (as was done two years ago in Toronto). The representative noted that only two activity groups are slated for a conference in the summer of 2002 and the other already has set another time so we would be the only group having a conference if we choose to do so.
The representative also noted that if we did not choose to have our conference jointly with the annual meeting in Philadelphia that for various reasons it would not work well for us to have our conference in June or July. In addition if we want another time, we should move quickly (in the next few months) to decide on a time so that there will be time for planning and advertisement. (He noted that normally the process should start 21 months before the conference in any case.)
The SIAM representative also noted that if we choose not to have our next conference joint with the annual meeting that they would still like a significant discrete mathematics presence at the annual meeting, given the growing importance of discrete mathematics in applications.
There was some discussion of the benefits and disadvantages of holding a conference jointly with the annual meeting. The positives included some attractive talks at the joint meeting that would not be at the discrete math conference, and attracting non discrete math people to some of our talks (or joint talks) and special sessions. It was noted that attendance at the Toronto conference two years ago was over 300, at Baltimore four years ago 220 to 230 and at this conference165 to 170. The organizer of the Toronto conference commented on the larger numbers at Toronto. He felt that the greater numbers were due more to the attractiveness of Toronto as a location (and the value of the US dollar in Canada) and to the fact that there seems to be an unusually large number of competing meetings this summer. He did not believe that large extra numbers were attracted because of the conference being held jointly with the annual meeting.
There was some discussion that the conference had not been held on the west coast for awhile, although Minneapolis counted in part as west coast (other possible locations for this conference were ruled out due to lack of local interest). It was also noted that locations in Canada pose some travel/visa problems for certain foreign nationals residing in the US and that this might be taken into account if a Canadian location is considered.
There was a brief discussion of whether the SIAM discrete mathematics conference ought to change to being held in odd years (due in part to conflict with the quadrennial graph theory meeting in Kalamazoo) or every 3 years or every 4 years. Support seemed to be given for maintaining the current system of conferences in every even year. The SIAM representative noted that most other activity groups have their conferences in odd years and that our moving to an odd year would not be a good idea from SIAM’s perspective of logistical support.
Several possible locations were noted by the chair (except for one case this was the day after the business meeting after talking to possible local representatives). Suggested locations with good local support and many non mathematical attractions include, San Diego, Banff and Victoria.
Finally, the chair asked for content suggestions for the next conference. He suggested that these could be sent via email after reflection. Several suggestions arose during the business meeting. These were minisymposia on the human genome project and combinatorial games. It was also noted that in the past there has been a greater presence in combinatorial optimization and that it would be nice if this resumed.
Item 3: Mentoring
The Chair brought up the idea of implementing a mentoring program for new researchers in discrete mathematics. This would meet a need somewhat different from project Next, which focuses on teaching. Response to this suggestion was quite positive. Suggested topics that might be covered in minisymposia etc included writing research grants, writing papers, giving talks, time management and information from department chairs. It was noted that as with project Next another benefit would be making connections, particularly for those at smaller institutions. It was noted that many others might be interested in minisymposia on such topics. Responding to this, it was suggested that such sessions be limited to mentoree participants in order to avoid large numbers or other people dominating discussion and to facilitate the networking possibilities. There was also some discussion about whether the mentoring would be best for graduate students, new PhDs or both. It was also noted that AUWM programs along this line have been successful and might be looked at as a model. Finally there were a few brief comments on possible funding.
The conclusion of the discussion on mentoring was that all felt it was a good idea and that it ought to be pursued in coming months in order to be implemented at the next conference.
Item 4: Web journal
The secretary introduced the idea of implementing a web based journal in discrete mathematics (along the lines of the monthly in terms of expository instead of research oriented) with emphasis on using java and other capabilities of the web. The suggestion was to allow gatekeeping of many current web sites and to allow greater professional recognition (i.e. for the deans) via the refereeing process. There was positive response only to parts of this and somewhat negative response to the general idea. It was commented that faculty should teach students to learn gatekeeping themselves and comments were made on the difficulty of maintaining current links (although a journal with submitted sites stored at the journal would avoid this). In general the journal idea seemed not to have much support. Other related ideas that seemed to have a bit more support included a bulletin board (with members only posting) for ideas and comments and a book review like listing for web sites, with commentary and reviewing as well as regular updates to keep links current. The SIAM representative commented that SIAM does whatever we ask them in terms of site maintenance but that we need to be in charge of providing content.
The conclusion seemed to be that there was moderate support of the idea of upgrading the web site to include site reviews and or a bulletin board.
Conclusion:
The business meeting adjourned with the chair reminding those present to continue to send ideas or suggestions regarding activity group activities via email.