MINUTES OF 2014 EXECUTIVE MEETING, HELD IN BARRANQUILLA

Present: Alexander Soifer (USA, President), Maria Falk de Losada (Colombia), Sergey Dorichenko (Russia), Robert Geretschlaeger (Austria).

Apologies: Jaroslav Svrcek (Czech Republic), Ali Rejali (Iran), Kiril Bankov (Bulgaria), Peter Taylor (Australia).

Alexander Soifer, president, opened the meeting.

Mike Clapper, Executive Director of the Australian Mathematical Trust (AMT), addressed the Executive. He indicated that it is too costly for the AMT to print hard copies of the Mathematics Competitions (MC), and that MC is losing money.

After that, Mr. Clapper left, and the Executive meeting commenced.

1. ICME-13 2016 Hamburg: Alexander Soifer briefed the Executive on the ICME Congress in Hamburg, 2016. Maria Falk de Losada and Alexander Soifer are co-chairs of a topic group at the Congress, TGS29 (see the official website of the Congress). The materials of TGS29 will possibly be published by Springer.
2. 2016 Mini Conference: It is hoped that Maria and Alexander will jointly organize a mini conference of WFNMC there.
3. Election Years: A. Soifer suggested to hold the traditional election of Executive at WFNMC congresses (every four years) starting in 2018, and as a transition, to extend by 2 years the term in office of every member of the Executive. It was unanimously decided to take this issue to the General meeting for a vote by the members.
4. 2018 WFNMC Conference: Furthermore the place for the WFNMC conference in 2018 was discussed. There were two informal proposals, Austria (by Robert Geretschlaeger) and Roumania (by Radu Gologan).
   It seems quite suitable and preferable to hold the conference in Romania just after IMO.
   The proposal regarding Austria is also suitable but perhaps it is possible to hold the next conference there.
   The meeting decided to complete the discussion by email, following the formal proposals of the two countries.
   Furthermore the meeting considered the following general problem. It would be quite convenient to hold the WFNMC meetings just after IMO in the same countries. Since a number of team leaders are members of WFNMC, they can stay in the same country for a week without new visas, airplane tickets etc.
   This seems realistic for the years of WFNMC conferences but difficult for the years of ICME because ICME and IMO fix the time of their actions without mutual coordination, so this time may coincide while the actions are held in different countries and some team leaders cannot be present at ICME since they must be at IMO.
5. Journal: The perspectives of WFNMC journal were discussed. The meeting decided to continue its publication including hardcopy version. Robert Geretshlaeger will consider with Jaroslav Svrcek the possibility of printing the journal in Czech Republic.
6. Executive Member Attendance: The meeting notes that the participants of this conference are small in number, and some of them had refused at the last moment. Even among the members of Executive, only half was present. The meeting intends to vote at the General meeting the rule that the members of Executive must attend all meetings of WFNMC.
7. Cooperation with IMO: Maria de Losada suggests to extend cooperation with IMO. In particular she proposes to conduct at each IMO a group on preparation for IMO for interested parties (e.g. for young teams).

Alexander Soifer closes the meeting.