Dear David,

We are the chairs of the Scientific Committees of the BMC and BAMC
and we are keen to open up any possible communication links between
our committees and that of the YRM. In particular we would be very
glad if you would nominate one of the YRM committee members to each of our
committees. The BMC committee is more formally constituted but
has only two physical meetings per year, one in September and one
at the BMC itself; the remainder of its business is carried on by email.
The BAMC committee's business is conducted almost entirely by
email.

We do feel that collaboration or cooperation between the BMC, the
BAMC and the YRM is essential to the wellbeing of all three. To
some extent we are competing for funds as well as for participants.
The BAMC has a long tradition of encouraging PhD students and other
young researchers to speak or present a poster, and the BMC often
has a 'postgraduate event' for PhD students only, before the main
conference begins.

As you suggest on your current website, in 2011 it is quite
feasible, timewise, for a young researcher to attend the YRM and the
appropriate one of the BMC or BAMC. Whether it is so feasible
financially is more doubtful, and indeed we want to suggest that we should
all consider reduced fees for those taking on a 'package deal' of two
conferences, though we do realise this might be tricky to implement.

It would be useful to us to know roughly how much attendance at the YRM
costs a young researcher, and where this money usually comes from. Does the
young researcher's department normally pay? The BMC uses part of its grant
from the LMS to subsidise PhD students, but the remainder of the cost does normally
come from departments. In the relatively difficult financial circumstances we can
all expect, departments may not want to pay for two 'general' conferences.

In 2012 the BAMC is at UCL and the BMC in Canterbury. These are reasonably
close venues but the timings are not: the BAMC is 27-29 March and the
BMC 16-19 April. In 2013 the BAMC is in Leeds and the BMC in Sheffield,
again not so very far from each other. The dates for 2013 have not been finalised.
The 2015 BMC and BAMC may both take place simultaneously in Cambridge,
on the lines of the 2005 Liverpool and 2010 Edinburgh meetings.

Maybe your committee is not thinking much at this stage beyond 2011 but, if
you do continue to hold your conference at Easter then we should talk about
cooperation in timing and venue.

Peter Giblin and Chris Howls ( C.J.Howls@soton.ac.uk )‎
--------------------------------------------------------------
Professor Peter J Giblin
Department of Mathematical Sciences
The University of Liverpool
Liverpool L69 7ZL, England
Telephone (+44)(0)151 794 4053
Fax (+44)(0)151 794 4061
email pjgiblin@liv.ac.uk
Webpage www.liv.ac.uk/~pjgiblin
Secretary S.A.Farrell@liv.ac.uk

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MJB
Suggested reply:

Dear Peter and Chris,

Thank you very much for taking an interest in YRM.

(para 1 make all points briefly)

YRM is a very different conference from the national professional conferences that you run. YRM is very much a student affair with the emphasis on peer collaborations. Its inception was demand-led, and its existence may yet prove to be ephemeral. It is run on a very tight budget, and whilst we enjoy the support of our departments, we have to do all the practical work ourselves.

(paras make each point in more detail)

They say:

In particular we would be very
glad if you would nominate one of the YRM committee members to each of our
committees. The BMC committee is more formally constituted but
has only two physical meetings per year, one in September and one
at the BMC itself; the remainder of its business is carried on by email.
The BAMC committee's business is conducted almost entirely by
email.

Suggest:

For the reasons set out below, none of the existing committee feels that they have capacity to add membership of the steering committee to their existing commitments. That said, we recognise that that having a YRM representative on your committee would be valuable, and have suggested this possibility to former organising committee members, who are still providing us with an invaluable advisory service.

Whilst we gratefully acknowledge the support of Warwick mathematics Institute and Warwick Complexity Science doctoral training centre, this support does not extend to providing us with assistance for the running of the conference. We are responsible for every aspect of organising and running the conference, including eliciting sponsorship, handling registration and finance, and negotiating with suppliers. With 6 months to go we find we need full committee meetings every fortnight, and subsets of the committee meet at least weekly, often for several hours. We expect that meetings of the full committee will become weekly after Christmas, and that the workload for the subsets will not diminish. We handle emails on a daily basis already, and we expect the volume to increase. We enjoy the support of our respective PhD supervisors, but they expect that the work for the conference is done in our spare time and does not slow our research progress.

They say:

email.

We do feel that collaboration or cooperation between the BMC, the
BAMC and the YRM is essential to the wellbeing of all three. To
some extent we are competing for funds as well as for participants.
The BAMC has a long tradition of encouraging PhD students and other
young researchers to speak or present a poster, and the BMC often
has a 'postgraduate event' for PhD students only, before the main
conference begins.

The aims of YRM are to facilitate networking and collaboration between early career research mathematicians and their peers from different institutions, forming working relationships which will persist into the future. For this reason, the talks are all given by PhD students to a peer audience, where the pressure of speaking in front of supervisors and potential employers is removed. The only established academics in attendance are those invited to give keynote talks, one per track, and the plenary speakers. The feedback from the first two conferences has indicated that these aims are being achieved, and observation confirms that during social and meal times, many clusters of participants can be seen enjoying animated mathematical discussion. In addition, the opportunity for PhD students to take sole responsibility for organising and delivering a meeting on this scale is almost unprecedented, offering a training opportunity for the individuals involved, and adding capability into the mathematics community.

Just as it is valuable for PhD students to have the opportunity to give talks to an audience of their peers, it is also vital that they gain experience of attending gatherings of professional mathematicians, and giving talks and presentations in that context. On this basis, we feel that YRM and the BMC/BAMC both have great positive impacts on young researchers, and neither makes the other redundant (there is of course some overlap, such as the keynote and plenary talks at YRM, and the postgraduate student events you mentioned at the BMC and BAMC.

(need some more here about why YRM is no threat to BMC/ BAMC)

They say:

As you suggest on your current website, in 2011 it is quite
feasible, timewise, for a young researcher to attend the YRM and the
appropriate one of the BMC or BAMC. Whether it is so feasible
financially is more doubtful, and indeed we want to suggest that we should
all consider reduced fees for those taking on a 'package deal' of two
conferences, though we do realise this might be tricky to implement.

It would be useful to us to know roughly how much attendance at the YRM
costs a young researcher, and where this money usually comes from. Does the
young researcher's department normally pay? The BMC uses part of its grant
from the LMS to subsidise PhD students, but the remainder of the cost does normally
come from departments. In the relatively difficult financial circumstances we can
all expect, departments may not want to pay for two 'general' conferences.

We believe that YRM, BAMC, and BMC each offers unique strengths and opportunities, and that it is not a case of choosing between two identical conferences. Of course we cannot guarantee that each department will understand this, and that some students may not be permitted to spend their travel allowance on both. In such a case, it is probable that the BMC / BAMC would be the departments’ first choice since these have an established reputation. The funding from YRM’s sponsors is used principally to keep costs to participants low, and it is our intention that students will be able to fund attendance at YRM out of their own pockets, should they wish to attend both. This use of sponsorship means that we are not in a position to offer further discounts for student attending two of the three conferences even if, in principle, we are in favour.

The registration fee for YRM2011 is £30, and optional accommodation another £55 for two nights (with the intention that a student for whom this is too expensive may well be able to find a friend whose floor they can stay on). Unfortunately, we are unlikely to be able to cover travel expenses, which will be an issue for some students.

They say

In 2012 the BAMC is at UCL and the BMC in Canterbury. These are reasonably
close venues but the timings are not: the BAMC is 27-29 March and the
BMC 16-19 April. In 2013 the BAMC is in Leeds and the BMC in Sheffield,
again not so very far from each other. The dates for 2013 have not been finalised.
The 2015 BMC and BAMC may both take place simultaneously in Cambridge,
on the lines of the 2005 Liverpool and 2010 Edinburgh meetings.

Maybe your committee is not thinking much at this stage beyond 2011 but, if
you do continue to hold your conference at Easter then we should talk about
cooperation in timing and venue.

Thank you for the information about the future locations and dates of BAMC / BMC. The exact timing for YRM2011 was driven principally by factors internal to the University of Warwick, and not by the choice of the organising committee. The LMS has asked that, in future, the dates for BAMC / BMC are taken into account when organising YRM, and we will pass this information on to whoever takes on the organisation next year.

Best wishes,

David Holmes

---

 

reply from B(A)MC. I can do the virtual committee thing, unless someone else wants to (I would plan to hand this over to the 2012 committee asap)

Dear David,

Many thanks for your thoughtful reply to the email from
Chris Howls and me. As the chair of the organizing
committee of the joint BMC and BAMC in Liverpool in 2005
you have my full sympathy with regard to the work involved
in putting on a large conference. The BMC and BAMC enjoy
the luxury of 'Scientific Committees' which stand at one
remove from the annual organizers; and those Scientific
Committees are Chris's and my responsibility, though I hand
over to Charles Goldie (Sussex) next June.

If you are able to locate someone willing to serve on either
of our Scientific Committees, even in a virtual capacity
(that is without attending meetings) that would be really useful
to maintain contact.

All the best for YRM 2011 (and your ongoing research of course).

Peter

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