Letter to Presidents and Representatives of Member Societies of ICIAM
Keyfitz Letter Number 2 2012 07 23
Dear Society President, Dear Representative of a Member Society,
This letter contains an urgent request: that you vote (that is, record
the vote of your society) on the "minimal changes" motion, which is active
until August 3. See Item 1 below. A few other items request your input,
as well.
Topics of this letter:
1) "Minimal Changes to Bylaws" motion
2) Minutes from the Kyoto Board meeting
3) Newsletter
4) Suggestions for ICIAM Prize Committees
5) Nominations for IMU prizes
6) Nominations for the Abel Prize
7) Call for sessions for MCA
8) Request to check and update information
9) Access to the internal website
1) "Minimal Changes to Bylaws" motion.
The details of the motion can be found in the annexes to the Kyoto
minutes (see the next item); the changes specify minimum terms for
representatives (in particular, to clarify that a representative remains
a representative outside of board meetings, for the purpose of voting
and communication); and gives terms of office for officers elected outside
the normal process (as happened when I became president-elect, for example,
and a new treasurer was needed). A separate proposal for changes in voting
(and possibly membership) structure will be presented for discussion at the
Board meeting in 2013. At this point, only 4 societies (ANZIAM, NORTIM,
GAMM and SEMA) have voted. The officers have duly registered the criticism
of the Board that it is a poor idea to have an e-mail ballot taking place
in a time-span that overlaps a Board meeting, and we will try to ensure it
doesn't happen again. However, if the current motion, which had been widely
agreed-upon and was delayed only because of an administrative error in
circulating the wrong version, can be completed, then the by-laws committee
can turn its attention to the more important matter of drafting voting
changes. We have only so much energy to put into this, and your cooperation
is greatly appreciated.
Remember, DEADLINE AUGUST 3, please.
Send your vote to the Secretary: afitt [at] brookes.ac.uk (afitt[at]brookes[dot]ac[dot]uk) .
2) Minutes from the Kyoto Board meeting
have just been posted:
/repiciam/minutes-2012-Kyoto.pdf
takes you straight to them. Login details, repeated below, are
Â
  log-in: iciam-representative
   password: zurich
You should know that all the pre-proposals for the 2019 Congress, as well
as all the other annexes, can be found just by clicking on the society
names or document titles on the last page of this PDF.
3) Newsletter.
Following the positive reaction at the Board meeting, the Council will try
its hand at a newsletter. As reported in Kyoto, Sean Bohun of UOIT in Ontario,
Canada has agreed to serve as "managing editor". The officers and I will be
working with him to set up a format, devise procedures, and produce a trial
issue for the Board to discuss. We will need an EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
to ensure quality and oversight, guarantee that all members' points of view
are represented, and to provide content.
In the next few weeks, the officers will contact some people and ask them to
serve, but we also welcome nominations from member societies.
Please send them to me or any officer; my address is
bkeyfitz [at] math.ohio-state.edu (bkeyfitz[at]math[dot]ohio-state[dot]edu) .
4) Suggestions for ICIAM Prize Committees.
A request for suggestions was issued, and many responses have been received.
Thank you. There is still time to write, if you have not done so,
before the end of July.
5) Nominations for IMU Prizes.
The IMU is accepting nominations for its 2014 prizes; see:
http://www.mathunion.org/general/prizes
for a list of prizes and for procedures for making nominations.
Closing date is the end of 2012.
6) Nominations for the Abel Prize.
A reminder also that nominations for the Abel Prize are also open, at
http://www.abelprisen.no/en/abelprisen/nomination.html
until September 15, 2012.
7) MCA special sessions, last call.
Proposals for special sessions for MCA 2013 ( http://www.mca2013.org/ )
are due July 31.
Send to: mca2013.sessions [at] gmail.com (mca2013[dot]sessions[at]gmail[dot]com)
8) Request to check and update information.
Many societies change their governance during the (northern hemisphere)
summer. Please check that our information about your society (president,
representative, with contact email & phone/fax ) is up to date.
If it is not, please let the Secretary know, or any officer.
9) Access to the internal restricted area of our websiteÂ
    /Â
 is as follows.
Go to the restricted area, via the link in the side-bar.
You can access the restricted area using:
   log-in: iciam-representative
   password: zurich
Columbus, July 23, 2012 Barbara Lee Keyfitz