Concerning "Edelspam": ICIAM TV and WebsEdge is not spam or a scam -- it's listed on the ICIAM 2011 website under the "Sponsors" link and also on the SIAM website. Taken directly from the ICIAM 2011 website:
"WebsEdge, a UK-based company, will be producing a series of video clips and documentary television programs that will be broadcast during and after the conference. ICIAM TV will include various aspects of the ICIAM 2011 program, including highlights from sessions, interviews with speakers, and reactions from delegates. WebsEdge has been engaged by ICIAM as an experimental effort aimed at making the meeting more meaningful for attendees and raising awareness about applied math research among the general public, as well as to allow those unable to attend to stay acquainted with the program and sessions."

It is indeed true, as Lennaert writes, that the applied math groups who wish to participate in the ICIAM videos have to pay WebsEdge almost $20,000 for production/sponsorship costs. That may seem an expensive fee in the world of mathematics, but in the grand scheme of how universities spend marketing dollars the fee is not too unreasonable. The applied math groups filmed on their campuses by WebsEdge will get to keep almost two hours of hi-def video footage which they can reuse for any other in-house marketing or recruiting purposes they wish (and hi-def video is not cheap).

Our applied and computational math group at RIT is fairly new, so we came to the conclusion that ICIAM TV would be a decent PR opportunity for us. Much more established groups at Cornell, RPI, Waterloo, and others also paid the fee to be video profiled by WebsEdge for ICIAM 2011. We mathematicians as a profession have never really been that good at marketing ourselves, so I for one am happy that ICIAM 2011 is engaging in this experimental video effort at raising awareness of what we do. See you in Vancouver!

Tony Harkin
Center for Applied and Computational Mathematics
Rochester Institute of Technology

The reasons why I called the WebsEdge campaign "edelspam" were threefold:
1) WebsEdge did not confirm beforehand that anybody at UOIT was going to attend ICIAM 2011 or probe what kind of research is being conducted at our institute, but rather went down a list blindly.
2) The price of 20K was not mentioned in the initial email, but kept hidden until our Dean spoke to a representative on the phone.
3) The suggestion (albeit no very explicit) that UOIT had somehow been "selected" out of all universities.
When I was writing the editorial, I did not find any mention of WebsEdge on the ICIAM and SIAM web sites. The web master at SIAM confirmed that the page mentioning WebsEdge was added on April 14th, just before the April issue went online. That was unfortunate. One of my colleagues confirmed directly with the organisers of ICIAM 2011 that WebsEdge's proposal was genuine on April 3rd. I could not confirm with the organisers whether the web page on ICIAM TV was added in response to such inquiries.

Lennaert van Veen

This exchange brings up a larger issue: The mathematics community could certainly do more to justify to the public why tax dollars should be used to fund us. On the other hand, we should be careful about treating universities simply as businesses with a product to sell. Unfortunately, there are many current proposals to do just that. If you have further thoughts on how this relates to our profession, we would like to hear from you.

The Editors