Sender: info-hol-request@edu.uidaho.cs.ted
Errors-To: info-hol-request@edu.uidaho.cs.ted
Date: 12 Mar 92 22:50
From: Jeffrey Joyce <joyce@ca.ubc.cs>
To: info-hol <info-hol@edu.uidaho.cs.ted>
Message-Id: <4365*joyce@cs.ubc.ca>
Subject: CALL FOR VOTES - HUG-93

Our true motive for offering to host HUG-93 is that we want to
sell exclusive television rights to one of the major networks,
collect millions of dollars and comfortably retire ! (Well,
that's my attempt to inject humour into this discussion.)

Our offer was made in spirit of community service ... and
we had some fun thinking of activities that would spice up
our proposal, eg., "sailing expeditions".  I was truely glad
to see that other proposals were also "spiced up" ... all
the ideas sound like fun (... too bad we can't have a holiday,
opps, `meeting' at each one of the suggested locations !).

So it is not, and never was, a matter of life-and-death to
host the HUG-93 at UBC.  I would be just as glad, personally,
to let someone else do the work.  Nevertheless, the real issue
is whether or not the meeting should be in North America or
Europe.  I must say that I was left with the impression last
August in Davis that HOL-93 would be somewhere in North America
given that it had been decided that the 92 meeting would be in
Belgium.  So admittedly, I was also a bit surprised not to see
this reflected in the "call for offers".

The reason for wanting to see the meeting in North America is
simple.  There are a number of us in North America who have worked
to establish and nuture local groups of people interested in HOL.
In many cases, these new users are young enthusiastic graduate
students who are genuinely looking forward to opportunities to
interact with the HOL community.  My research grant is simply
not big enough to spend $15K to fly a bunch of students to
Europe every year.  If the meeting held in North America at
least every second year, then it is much more likely that I
can find funds to send students to the annual meeting.

I appreciate that holding meetings in North America has a greater
financial impact for Europeans than holding them somewhere in Europe.
However, steps were taken last year for the Davis meeting to
lessen this impact by finding funds (thanks to Karl Levitt and
Myla Archer) to provide travel bursaries for a number of
students -- with the bulk of the money going to European students.
It would be nice to see a "student travel bursary program" become
a regular feature of HUG meetings.  There are many agencies
(including international agencies such as NATO) which have programs
that could potentially provide funds for this program.

I have taken this opportunity to explain why some of us would like
to see the 1993 meeting in North America.  However, I would not
want to see this become a "big issue" that requires some sort of
revised voting procedure.  Furthermore, I don't think that any of
us "crafty North Americans" are going to be "sore losers" should
it be decided that the meeting will be elsewhere ... although
we are bound to be a little disappointed.

 - Jeff