Snowbird 2013 came and went, and in the sidelines a number a important meetings of the Activity Group, the editorial board of its home journal and its effervescent Web Portal took place. Let us summarise some of the discussions, ideas and opinions that were exchanged and may influence our future.

During the DSWeb Editorial Board meeting the main topic of discussion was the migration to a new Content Management System. The current system has served us well for ten years, but lacks in flexibility, in linking with present-day social media and in searchability. SIAM had sent a heavy delegation including the overlord, Jim Crowley, Mitch Chernoff from Publishing and Ted Krull from Information Management. The latter briefly presented plans for the new portal, which will be built on an open-source project called "dotnetnuke". It should allow for greater ease of use for editors as well as contributors, better facilities for inviting feedback, messaging between members and linking to other SIAM services and for indexing and searching old content. That sounds great but, as many of us know, there can be gaping holes between what the software promises it can do and how things work in the end. For that reason, we agreed to start by setting up a trial version that the editors can test and give feedback on. In the interest of continuity, Peter agreed to coordinate the backs and forths between SIAM's developers and our team, and he has kicked off by writing the Editorial for this issue.

At the AG Business Meeting, the issue that got most attention was the future location of the bi-annual AG meeting. A lot has been written in this Magazine over the past years, going back to Jens Rademacher's report on DS11. In short, the contract for the 2015 meeting has been signed and sealed with the Snowbird resort, but the meetings after that have not found a home yet. AG Chair Hans Kaper explained to the well-attended meeting how the SIAM office assembled a list of six viable options, based on a list of requirements extracted from the responses to the DS11 questionnaire and the many discussions among current and former elected officers. The most important restrictions were that the venue should be relatively easy to get to from anywhere in the world while preserving some of the seclusion that makes Snowbird special. Only venues in the USA and Canada were considered.
In a subsequent cull, several technical requirements were taken into account, such as the sizes and organisation of the lecture halls, the room rates, minimal spending on food and drink and so forth. This lead to the selection of two candidates: Snowbird and the Wild Horse Resort near Phoenix, Arizona. A lively discussion ensued, in which it was clear that a substantial number of people are ready to move, mostly for reasons explained in our January editorial. On the other hand, a large group of people is attached to Snowbird and worries that the unique character of the meeting might be compromised at a different location.
Former AG chair Alan Champneys proposed that the details of each of the two bids be made available to all AG members and some sort of vote be held, but Hans Kaper seemed somewhat apprehensive. At this point the meeting turned a bit standoffish, with a majority of the audience supporting Alan's idea, but Hans unwilling to decide on the procedure on the spot. In the end, Hans agreed to discuss with the other elected officers how to hold a non-binding vote. Hans further encouraged all attendees to consider donating to the Moser lecture fund, in order to support and enhance our most prestigious prize.
The complete agenda of the business meeting can be found here.

Last, but not least, there is the questionnaire. About ninety per cent of the 319 respondents found the technical program excellent, the plenary lecture well-presented and the session themes wisely selected. This result is similar to that of DS11. New elements in the program elicited more controversy. In particular the featured minisymposia divided the opinions. A surprisingly large number of respondent took the trouble to write a few lines of assessment, and most are either very positive or very negative. On the positive side, the quality and timely themes are praised. On the negative side, many dislike the special status these minisymposia had. For one thing, this status goes against the egalitarian spirit of the meeting and for another it leads to an inefficient use of rooms and time. Based on the feedback, I suppose it is fair to say that the DS15 organisers should keep the idea alive, but look for improvements in the implementation.
Over all, the change that gets most negative reviews is the reduction of speaking time. Over the years, slots have eroded from twenty to thirty minutes down to ten to fifteen minutes. Indeed I must say that I felt somewhat embarrassed when I had to cut off the introductory speaker in my session, knowing he had come all the way from Australia and had hardly made it to his own work. Many respondents suggest that eliminating overlap between sessions and raising the bar for acceptance would allow us to return to longer slots and more in-depth presentations.
Was there, perhaps, a selection effect here? Did those who favour many short presentations not write the questionnaire? We will let you pick the bones out of that one. You are always welcome to write to the editors and have your voice heard.