Minutes Business Meeting SI(AG)^2, Fort Collins, August 2 2013. 6:10 PM 1. Introduction of officers. Seth briefly introduces the current officers and the candidate officers. Current: chair: Seth Sullivant vice chair: Iwan Duursma program director: Anton Leykin secretary: Jan Draisma Candidates: chair: Jan Draisma / Iwan Duursma vice chair: Elisa Gorla / Kristin Lauter program director: Greg Blekherman / Ruriko Yoshida secretary: Irina Kogan / Kristian Ranestad The SIAG has an advisory panel, whose original purpose was to get the SIAG up and running. The panel members and officers have agreed that there is presently no real need for such a panel anymore. It will therefore be phased out as of January 1, 2014. 2. Report on the SIAG's activities. SIAM conference on applied algebraic geometry 2013 -------------------------------------------------- Pre-registrations have increased from about 320 in 2011 to about 350 this year. Including late registrations there are presently about 390 participants. The membership applauds organising committee chairs Alicia Dickenstein and Anton Leykin and local committee chair Dan Bates for this achievement. Dan Bates thanks the conference sponsors: NSF, NSA, IMA, and four units of CSU. Other activities ---------------- - 11 minisymposia from the SIAG at the 2012 SIAM annual meeting - SIAG charter renewal in 2013 - the SIAG's Wiki could be used more intensively: members are encouraged to add their conference announcements, books they have co-authored, etc. - The SIAG's Newsletter appears roughly four times annually. Members are encouraged to feed the secretary even more information for the letter. - The SIAG's visibility would profit from an article on the maths we do in "SIAM News". It is proposed that one of this year's invited speakers is asked to collaborate on this. SIAM conference on applied algebraic geometry 2015 -------------------------------------------------- Two promising pre-proposals were submitted for the SIAG's next conference. Upon seeing the other pre-proposal, one of the proposing groups decided not to submit a worked-out proposal. This leaves one proposal, from NIMS, Korea, where the proposed dates are August 3-7 in 2015. This fits well with ICIAM, which takes place from August 10-14 in Beijing, and perhaps also with FPSAC (July 6-10 at NIMS/KAIST). On behalf of NIMS, Hyungju Park sketches their proposal for AAG 2015. Frank Sottile says that the SIAG should try to be present at ICIAM with minisymposia. Linda says that the collection of minisymposia proposals will start in January. There is a brief discussion about the length of the meeting. The consensus seems to be that 5 days will allow for a slightly more relaxed schedule, and Linda Thiel ensures us that there are no SIAM-rules against this, but that registration fees and accommodation expenses have to be taken into account. Hyungju says that this will not be a problem at NIMS, which has already committed to at least 50,000 dollar funding. The registration fee will not increase relative to this year, but will cover breakfasts, sandwich lunches, a banquet and two dinners. Tanja Lange asks about cheap accommodation for young people, and Hyungju mentions that he is trying to use KAIST's dormitories, but that things are not definitive yet. Frank Sottile stresses that the next officers and/or the organising committee should try to get additional funding (e.g. NSF) for Americans travelling to AAG 2015. NIMS thematic programme in 2014 ------------------------------- Hyungju then sketches a thematic programme to be held one year earlier, from May 5 - August 5, 2014 organised by Bernd Sturmfels and himself. This programme will serve the purpose of drawing young people into our field, who might likely attend AAG 2015. Apart from funding for short-term visitors, there will be funding for two two-year postdocs, who will also be involved in the organisation of AAG 2015. The thematic programme will culminate in an ICM satellite conference on algebraic geometry from August 6-10. It is pointed out that it would be desirable to have at least one applied session in that satellite. Hyungju then advertises the ICM itself (August 13-21). 3. Membership report Seth shows various diagrams comparing the SIAG with other SIAGs. We are among the smaller ones. He stresses that it is important to try and attract new people, e.g.: - SIAM members can nominate students to become members, and - SIAM has cheap outreach memberships for mathematicians based in many countries in, e.g., Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia. The complete list is online. - Linda adds that SIAM has reciprocity agreements with many math societies. 4. A SIAM journal on algebraic geometry The possibility of such a journal is discussed. There seems to be consensus that it would fill a need. The fact that SIAM journals strive to be the best in their fields, and that papers in SIAM journals appear electronically immediately when they are ready are mentioned as mentioned as arguments in favour of establishing a journal. The journal would not formally be related to the SIAG---e.g., its editors would not have to be SIAG members or even SIAM members---but there would likely be a strong correlation between the two. Frank Sottile feels that finding good editors will not be a problem. The main challenge is writing a strong proposal to SIAM. Seth has inquired with SIAM's vice president for publications about the rules. The name and scope of a journal are briefly discussed, e.g. it is suggested that "SIAM journal of algebra" might attract papers from a wider range of mathematics, or that widening the journal's (and perhaps even the SIAG's) scope to "algebraic geometry and algebraic topology" might be the way to go. In view of time, the discussion is ended here---but it will certainly be continued informally. 7:20 PM