9. Asilomar's Webpage
Organizer: Bart Goddard
2508 Spruceleaf Circle
Austin, TX 78757
goddardb@newsguy.com
Personal Note: I've terminated my relationship with Concordia
University at Austin, so I'm using my personal contact information
to organize this conference. I am reluctant to put my home phone
on this site, however, and I'm sorry if that creates an inconvenience
for anyone. My number is NOT unlisted, and conferees are welcome to
brave both the trials of Directory Assistance and the low probability
that my offspring won't be tying up the line if they feel a telephone
conversation is necessary. Voicemail exists.
A. Hurry! We do seem to be competing (somewhat fiercely) with other groups at Asilomar for space.
Rooms are on a first come basis and seem to be going fast. My guess is that
you need to get your reservation in by Sept. 15th to be comfortable. But I'm
also sure that later dates will still get you a room on grounds. Many people
stay off grounds in local motels. It would help me if those people would
also hurry and register too, since Asilomar is hounding me for accurate head
counts already.
B. If you are planning on staying on grounds, print
this Word document, fill it
out and send it with your payment directly to Asilomar (note that this includes
four nights and all meals). Note that vegetarian meals and other dietary options
are available.
C. Download and print this Word document and send it with your registration fee
to me. Please note that this means that you need to write two checks and send
them to two different places. Asilomar takes credit cards, but I do not.
A couple of notes: In the past, we've had enough spouses staying on grounds
and few enough conferees staying off grounds that things have balanced out.
But the last two times at Asilomar, there have been uncomfortable situations
in which the number of chairs I've needed in the meeting room has exceeded
the number of beds rented, which raises the management's eyebrows. As I
explained at the business meeting two years ago,
off-grounds attendees (number theorists, but not spouses, etc.) will have to
start paying the daily use fee, which is $8 per day, no matter how short the
day is. So for a person attending all of the conference and staying off grounds,
I've added a $40 charge to my registration form.
If you will not be there for the entire 5 days then feel free to make your own
adjustment to this fee, by pro-rating for the number of days you'll be
present. (Attending the banquet counts as a day.)
The upside to the daily use fee is that it buys off grounds people the right
to eat in the Asilomar dining hall. (Non-number theorists would have to pay
the fee in order to eat at the dining hall.) Having paid the fee, prices for
meals are: (Adult) Breakfast: $7.16, Lunch $9.72, Dinner $15.54 (Child 3-12
years old) Breakfast: $6.05, Lunch $6.94, Dinner $12.22, all including tax.
A non-number theorist staying off grounds needs to pay the fee only on days
that he eats in the dining hall.
Because we're trying to save the "historic" rooms for those on a budget,
we're not allowing those rooms to be rented for single occupancy. So if
you want the luxury of a single room, then you have to also indulge yourself
the luxury of a "standard" room. (We're really thinking of saving the
historic rooms for graduate students, but it's first come, first served.)
By Air: Monterey has an airport serviced by major airlines. Taxis, rental cars
and public transportation are available from there to the Asilomar Conference
Grounds.
Driving directions and maps are avialable on Asilomar's website:
Directions
Peter Montgomery, our resident expert on California's train system, has provided
these directions for getting to Asilomar without driving: Those coming from San Francisco and San
Jose airports can take the Monterey-Salinas Airbus
to Monterey Transit Plaza in downtown Monterey for $30. Reservations are recommended.
Greyhound also serves Monterey Transit Plaza
(N.B. this is separate from the Monterey Greyhound station).
Amtrak has connecting buses to Salinas and
San Jose Amtrak stations.
Monterey-Salinas Transit (MST) route A connects
Monterey Transit
Plaza to the Asilomar entrance (and to Monterey Aquarium) for $1.75.
MST route 21 serves Monterey airport but does not run on Sunday.
A. WE ARE FUNDED!!! For U.S Citizens, the NSA will support travel,
room and board, and registration expenses for conference attendance for
graduate students, the unemployed, and junior faculty who do not otherwise
have full support. (Two years ago, I was able to spend only half of
the grant, which is bad. So I need to stress that junior faculty should
not be shy about asking for funds, lest we be in danger of having the
amount of support cut. I'm happy to listen to sentences like "OK,
I'll apply for support, but if you run out of money, then I should be
the one to not get any" and use my own judgement for distribution of
funds. So please ask for money.) The amount of the award is $9,850.
Usually everyone gets whatever they ask for. In the years we run short,
the method of distribution has been to fund everyone at a constant
percentage (as far as I know always >90%.)
(p.s. I'm going to try to get an advance against the grant this time,
in order to avoid the massive delays we had two years ago, which was
caused mostly by the NSA and Office of Naval Research having never
heard of Concordia. Now they know. Hopefully no graduate students
will be eating mac&cheese until August waiting for checks this time.
I think end of March at the latest.)
B. The Number Theory Foundation has agreed again to complement the
NSA's support by supporting the travel for non-US citizen graduate
students who otherwise do not have support. There is usually a cap
on the amount of support per person. The amount of the award is $1500.
The details about how to divide this money are worked out after the
requests come in. The committee and the organizer meet and try to
meet the needs in a fair and reasonable way.
C. The application procedure for BOTH grants is identical. Just
keep all your receipts. There will be a form available at the conference,
and downloadable from this site, which will be filled out and mailed to
me after you get back home and have your final expenses tallied. Also,
we will need a short letter of support from a supervisor (advisor or
department head or dean, say) saying that 1. attendance at this conference
is a good idea, 2. that there is not other support available OR that
the available support is partial and what the extent of that partial
support is, and 3. the letter MUST verify the citizenship status of
the applicant so that we can pay out of the correct fund.
So that's three things: Receipts + form + letter.
D. As always, if something's not clear, shoot me an e-mail.
Here is the Problem Set from the 2002 Conference at San Franciso:
PDF Version of Problem Set
Problems from the 2001 conference at Asilomar:
PostScript Version of Cover Page
PostScript Version of Problem Set
PDF Version of Cover Page
PDF Version of Problem Set
DVI Version of Cover Page
DVI Version of Problem Set
Problems from the 2000 conference in San Diego:
PostScript Version of Cover Page
PostScript Version of Problem Set
DVI Version of Cover Page
DVI Version of Problem Set
PDF Version of Cover Page
PDF Version of Problem Set
Here is the Word document listing the speakers and their titles
from the 2001 West Coast Number Theory Conference which was held
at Asilomar. I make it available to give an idea of the participant
list and the wide variety and level of talks one can expect at
this conference. (This document may not reflect last minute changes
that were made to the program.)
We will begin with an opening banquet on the evening of Dec. 17 at 6 pm. Attendence
at the banquet is optional, and there is an additional surcharge of $8
for the meal (which means that the cost for off-grounds attendees is $23.) After
dinner, we will retire to the meeting room, which is currently assigned as
Heather (see the map in the directions link), where we'll have a quick meeting where
titles are submitted and a schedule of talks is hastily assembled. People who
skip the banquet are welcome to meet the rest of us at Heather.
Tentatively we'll schedule this meeting for 7:30 pm.
(The surcharges for the special entrees for banquets are quite pricy. I'm
most likely to choose "Chicken Asilomar" yet again, because it's half the
price of the others. I think the idea is more the commeraderie than paying
$16 +$8 daily use fee +$15 dinner fee = $39 for a plate of Asilomar's version
of smoked salmon. So chicken will be the "meat entree", and there will be a
vegetarian option, which is currently listed as "Vegetarian Wellington"
involving white beans and fontina cheese. People wanting Kosher or Vegan
or other options should contact Asilomar directly.)
The length allowed for all talks is usually about 15 minutes,
including time for questions. Dec. 18 and 20 will be full days of talks,
while Dec. 19 will have talks in the morning, leaving the afternoon for
our "afternoon off" for sightseeing and recreation. Dec. 21 will be
another half day. Two problem sessions will be scheduled during the
conference, where unsolved problems are
presented (and Peter Montgomery will proceed to solve them ;-)) The
results from previous problem sessions are given below. The second
problem session will most likely be on the morning of Dec. 21.
An overhead projector is provided for talks. The chalkboards that have been
available in the past have been woefully inadequate. If you need anything
like computer projection equipment or computers, then it's strictly BYO.
I do bring a small supply of blank transparencies and markers, but they
get snarfed up quickly by non-self-sufficient attendees. I'll try to get
you whatever you need if I have enough lead time, but I recommend that
you bring your own stuff, and not rely on my limited resourcefulness.
I am happy to help in any way. If downloading the forms doesn't work,
then I can e-mail or snail mail them. If you know of someone who wants
to be added to the e-mail or snail mail list, then please let me know or have
them mail me.
Corrections and additions to this page are welcome. (And I know
they are forthcoming ;-))
Thanks to David Cantor who maintains the wntc.org domain, Lawrence Szu who
maintains our mirror site, Gerry Myerson who maintains the problems sets,
The Number Theory Foundation, and others who do things that keep things
running smoothly.