Conference information for organisers
Run a Conference with the IMA
As a Learned Society the IMA organises conferences throughout Britain that promote the understanding of Mathematics and its Applications.
Some conferences are regular fixtures in member's diaries (Mathematics of Surfaces X, Cryptography and Coding IX), and others are designed for growing or niche areas of Mathematics. Conferences are organised by your Scientific Committee working together with the IMA. We will:- Host the conference
- Underwrite the conference finances
- Sponsor keynote speakers
- Administer the conference (bookings, rooms)
- Publish Proceedings
Why get the IMA to run your Conference?
So it's finally decided: BURPS '14 will be run as a 3-day residential conference 'on campus' at the University of Edchester in the Autumn.
The Mathematics Department is abuzz with excitement. Who will the conference committee chair be? Will the Conference Banquet be at that pole-dancing club again? Will Professor Bibulous from Toper University drink too much and disgrace himself for the third time running? Who will create the conference budget and run all the finances? How awkward will the Edchester University Conference Office be this time? Who will manage the call for papers and delegate registration? Who will process and collate all the selected abstracts and get a Conference Digest Printed? Who will manage publicity, create a conference web site and keep the web pages up to date? Who will send formal invitations to all the invited speakers? Who will arrange the accommodation and catering facilities for all the delegates? Who will book all the necessary lecture theatres and audio-visual facilities? More importantly, how many organising committee members' marriages will be ruined by the extra work that running such a prestigious international conference will inevitably entail? Actually, there is an alternative. Instead of doing all the administration, documentation and financial work yourself, leaving your poor students to revise for their exams alone and feigning amazement when your long-suffering partner appears less than enthusiastic about coming on the "conference trip" to the local Science Park to witness the enthralling history of adding machines - why not arrange for the IMA to manage all the 'domestic stuff' leaving you to concentrate on setting up the scientific programme schedule, selecting the conference abstracts and choosing those world-class international keynote speakers. As a professional and learned society the IMA organises 8 to 10 residential, campus-based conferences each year throughout the UK, to promote and advance the understanding of Mathematics and its Applications. Whilst some conference themes have become regular biennial or triennial events such as Mathematics of Surfaces, or Cryptography and Coding, many popular new subject areas are emerging such as Vision, Video and Graphics, Modelling in the Management of Healthcare and The Use and Control of Chaos. The IMA supports and encourages conference development in all such areas. So what exactly can the IMA do for you? Of course, you will still need to have your own Scientific Committee to structure and organise the Science part of the conference and to peer review the abstracts. Apart from this, though, the IMA can work in collaboration with you and your scientific committee to plan, budget for and run your conference. In summary the IMA can:- Set up and maintain conference web pages and issue the call for papers
- Set reasonable conference fees and underwrite the conference finances
- Sponsor your invited keynote speakers from the UK, Europe and RoW
- Arrange all necessary room hire, lecture theatre(s) and audio visual facilities
- Administer the conference (registration, invoicing, catering, accommodation)
- Distribute travel information and joining instructions to all delegates
- Create a Pre-Conference Digest and/or Publish Post-Conference Proceedings
- Host the conference in a nearby University or campus
- Set up a help-desk on-site with IMA staff 'to hand' throughout the conference
- Administer settlement of all invoices and expenses after the conference
- Publish a conference report in the IMA members' publication Mathematics Today
IMA Conferences Explained
In case you didn’t know, the IMA runs conferences. This activity has been going on for many years: for example, if you idly Google ‘IMA conferences 1980’ then the first search result tells you that the IMA ran a conference on Control Theory at Sheffield University way back in September 1980 – and that was the third in a series! The amount of conferences that the IMA runs varies from year to year – a good year might see 12 taking place, but in a less successful year perhaps only 6 will run. Like research grant income, it’s normally lumpy.
The plan for IMA conferences is simple: if you are interested in running a conference with the IMA we will provide an experienced and professional service that will take care of all the arrangements for you. The Scientific Committee of course is your affair – the IMA will not interfere in any of the scientific decisions that you make, and freed of the cares of the many jobs that have to be done to make a conference run successfully, you should be able to devote all of your energies to the technical substance of the meeting. How do we want to run conferences in the future? At our recent IMA strategy review, conferences were considered in detail. In particular, the finance committee had expressed concerns that conferences should be run on a sound financial basis. As a result of this, I was asked to convene a ‘conference strategy group’ that could discuss all of the relevant issues. The group duly met, and many of the main issues were soon identified. In particular, though financial performance is normally broadly neutral when evaluated purely on a simple ‘money in, money out’ basis, the picture is very different when any sort of FEC (Full Economic Costing) model is used – for all such models show that the IMA essentially runs conferences at a loss. It was finally resolved that I should produce a position paper for the November meeting of Council, which both invited further discussion and made some firm proposals for conference strategy going forward. The end result of the Council meeting was that the following strategic principles for conferences were established:- A Conferences Committee should be set up to oversee the IMA’s conference operation.
- The IMA should continue to run conferences partly as a service to the community. It should not run conferences solely as a source of revenue, but neither should it support such events at a loss, as the consequent drain of funds is unlikely to be sustainable. There is nothing to stop some conferences being run just to make money, of course.
- The current modus operandi of running conferences involves risk, but this should continue. The IMA shoulders most of the risk that a conference might lose money, but also takes some of the profits if a conference is a success.
- For future conferences the Chair of the Organising Committee should normally be an IMA member.
- One way of being clearer about financial responsibility is to require an agreed ‘basis for costing’ according to guidelines that are clearly laid out in the ‘Guide to Conference Organisers’. This guide has now been changed to make things clearer.
- In terms of cost recovery, four different types of conference have now been identified, each with different funding models. These are:
- In each conference season, the conference committee will classify each proposed conference into one of four types, as described above. The mix will be carefully considered in order to ensure a suitable distribution of different types of conference.
- An FEC-type ‘profit and loss’ conference report will be given at each year end that reflects the real operating cost of the conference activity but excludes overheads. One-off costs such as database and website development will no longer be considered as part of the overhead to which conferences are expected to contribute.
- Effort will be put into commissioning strategic ideas for conferences. Buy-in from the academics suggesting a conference theme is essential; it must be one which they would choose to attend. EPSRC strategic themes could strongly influence the programme and advisors could be sought to help identify conference topics.
- The conferences committee will also consider other ideas for pure cash generation – for example, at some time in the future we could engage people to run CPD courses at a profit as the RSS and ORS do.
