The future of Snowbird

By Your DSWeb Editors
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The first Snowbird meeting was held in 1992. It was the second meeting of the Activity Group on Dynamical Systems, the first having been held in Florida. About four hundred participants occupied less than half the available accommodations. Minisymposia consisted of thirty minute presentations, and other sessions came in twenty minute blocks. The Program, still available from the SIAM web site, also invites participants to an organised trip to Salt Lake City and its Mormon Temple.

Such excursions are no longer on the menu. Most of us have been to Snowbird several times and have visited the Jell-O capital. We have gotten used to the peculiarities: the resort-style card you can use to pay, the membership needed to purchase alcohol at the bar on top of the hotel and the odd warning that mountain lions may devour those walking back to their room at the Inn at night. Snowbird has become synonymous with our bi-annual AG meeting, the first thing on the calender in every odd year. So much, perhaps, that we tend not to think about alternatives. Snowbird is, well, Snowbird...

However, the end of our contract with the hotel and conference facility is drawing near, and there is at least one pressing reason to reconsider our habit. The number of participants this year will be nearly double that in 1992. We are now dangerously close to the capacity of the largest auditorium. Also, we are apparently close to filling up the guest rooms. Thus, we face a choice: either we stay where we are, but make some changes to the format of the meeting to keep the numbers manageable, or we move to a bigger nest.

Of course, the discussion on the pros and cons of Snowbird is not new. Two years ago, the issue was brought up on the questionnaire for participants of DS11

, as well as during several AG business meetings. Roughly half the respondents indicated that they would prefer a future at Snowbird, while the other half suggested places all over the United States and Canada, and, with some hesitation, Europe. In fact, there hardly is a question regarding the format or location of the meeting that does not split the opinions between a small majority and a significant, vocal minority. This in contrast to the response to the statement that "The technical program was excellent", with which less than 2% disagreed.

In short, the meeting is excellent. We love it, and therefore have strong opinions about its future. No decision is going to satisfy everybody. But we can at least involve our members in the discussion as much as reasonably possible. The best place to do so is, of course, DSWeb. Our current Chair, Hans Kaper, has asked SIAM to come up with a list of alternatives. That list should make the discussion more concrete. For now, your Editors will propose three scenarios. Each of these take into account the opinion we have solicited from the current and previous conference Chairs, AG officers and several DSWeb veterans over the last few weeks.

Lennaert van Veen

  • Snowbird migrates, sketched by Peter van Heijster.
    Let's face it, we have to move! The conference Snowbird has outgrown its location and to keep the integrity and high quality of the conference it is time to move. This gives us the opportunity to reinvent Snowbird; to tackle some of the issues we all experience at Snowbird (boringness, hard to reach, altitude, etc.) but also to strengthen its good points (quality, seclusion, egalitarian spirit, open, etc.). The best way to achieve this is to move the meeting around to another venue every two years. This way, the conference will never be boring (I bet Snowbird was very exciting the first year!). It will be maybe hard to reach one year, but the next time it will be an easy commute into your own backyard. The meeting could even go overseas once every six or eight years to increase the participation of the non-American members (which is a significant percentage!). The new locations will have to be big enough such that every reasonable talk or session is able to run again, the MS presentations can return to their old original awesome format of 25 + 5 min and interesting work from outside the field of dynamical systems can still be featured. The number of poster sessions will be increased such that even more work can be presented. In this new structure, Snowbird (which is still the way we all call it after 20 years on the road!) will keep on growing, the high quality of meeting, the egalitarian spirit and openness, which are the foundation of the meeting, are guaranteed.
  • Snowbird moves to a bigger nest, sketched by Kresimir Josic.
    A second alternative is to find a different, but permanent location for the meeting. Ideally, this new location would retain at least some of the positive features of Snowbird: It would be relatively isolated, and the environment would be conducive to scientific exchanges. However, the new location would ideally not suffer the same drawbacks as Snowbird: There would be a greater variety of dining options, and the venue would be more accessible. It would be large enough to accommodate over a 1000 participants. This sounds great, but, unfortunately, some of these requirements are contradictory - a venue with better dining options or one that is more accessible is unlikely to be isolated. Moving the meeting to a city is a possibility, and offers a number of advantages. A mid-sized city, like Vancouver, San Diego or even a more isolated location at one of the coasts of the US may be a feasible alternative.
  • Snowbird remains at Snowbird, sketched by Lennaert van Veen.
    It is 2023, and nine hundred participants fill the Ballroom to hear the opening address of the sixteenth Snowbird meeting. Many have already arrived on Friday to get used to the altitude and dry air. With discount rates for stays of at least six nights in place, the rooms will be crowded right up to the final plenary session. A busy five-and-a half days lie ahead, with three evening poster sessions, during which there will be no shortage of desserts, as highlights. With few exceptions, the dynamical systems community is glad that the decision was taken to cap the number of presentations and keep the meeting small enough to accidentally meet almost everybody. They silently thank DSWeb Magazine for the timely and insightful articles that guided the discussion. The Snowbird meeting has kept its unique character, and plays a different role from such travelling meetings as the Dynamics Days. Minisymposium proposals are held up to a higher standard than before. The first presentation really does give an overview, and no two speakers are from the same clan. Often, organisers of minisymposium with similar topics are requested to merge their speaker lists, and choose fifteen or thirty minute slots for each speaker. Sometimes, priority is given to novel applications and ideas over reports of minor progress. Of course, setting up an efficient system for this peer-reviewing process was not easy, but it paid off. The conference chairs do not have to worry about practical arrangements, but use the template of the previous meeting. And the other eight-hundred ninety-eight participants? They get to do what they love dearly: complain about the long trip to the resort, the pricey steak and listless tacos and the mountains neither good for skiing nor for hiking...

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