Meet Dr Magda Carr – Chair of BAMC 2024

As well as partnering with private businesses across a whole range of sectors, our client portfolio also includes prestigious academic institutions. This year we were brought on board by Newcastle University to deliver the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium (BAMC), the largest applied mathematics conference in the UK. The event took place over three days in April 2024 and brought together students, academics, and industry professionals to discuss recent advances in the field. The organising committee for the event was chaired by Dr. Magda Carr, a Reader in Applied Mathematics at Newcastle University. We sat down with Dr. Carr to discuss what it was like bringing this prestigious event to the North East, how event management is a far cry from her day job, and talk through some of the unseen legacies that the event has created.

Tell us a little bit about BAMC 2024 and why it was an important milestone that it was held here in the North East. 

The BAMC is the largest conference in the UK for applied mathematicians, attracting delegates from across the UK and internationally. It is hosted by different universities each year and this year it was the turn of Newcastle University which gave us an amazing opportunity to welcome people to the city and put Newcastle on the map in our field. As well as getting fantastic feedback on the event itself, it was uplifting to hear the positive feedback for our city from first-time visitors too. Almost 400 people attended the event and we had lots of delegates commenting on how welcoming they found the city; how easy it is to navigate and how much there is to do here. It is easy to forget how lucky we are when all this is right on your doorstep so it was good to see it through fresh eyes.

The last time we (Newcastle) hosted the BAMC was in 1984 so we were delighted to be able to host this prestigious event again in 2024.

How did you find working with the BeaconHouse team to organise such a high-profile event for your sector? 

This was my first time chairing an event organising committee and this particular event is quite a big undertaking but I was happy to take on the challenge. I’m quite an organised person naturally so it wasn’t too daunting, and I did get teaching relief as the School of Mathematics does value how much time it takes to give the delegates a memorable experience, and it was great to know that BeaconHouse Events were there to support throughout the whole process. The team was recommended to me by another academic in the School who had recently worked with the team at BeaconHouse Events on a large-scale medical science conference where complete autonomy had been handed over to BeaconHouse and the feedback was fantastic on what was achieved.

We had a scoping meeting with Sarah to talk through our ambitions for the event, what we wanted it to entail, and how much in-house resources we had, and discussed budgets and timescales. That meeting was really helpful for me and the rest of the committee, who of course don’t come from an events background, because it was flexible in terms of what budget we had and how we could make best use of that. From that meeting, Sarah took all of our thoughts and came back with a detailed approach that she thought would be the best way to achieve what we needed to achieve. After that, we were introduced to our dedicated event manager Katie who took over all of the organisation and we were able to really get into the detail of what the event would look like. What we appreciated was BeaconHouse taking the reins and being very transparent throughout the whole process which helped us understand what support we were going to get. This communication and transparency meant that we were able to utilise the budget effectively and felt like we had a robust understanding of where all the resources would be allocated.

The event was over three days, that’s a lot of content to manage. How did you decide what that looked like and how did you keep people engaged? 

We had a good idea of what worked well from past BAMC events, but we worked closely with Katie to develop a timeline so we could get abstracts (a summary of the papers that were being presented) in advance, and when they came in we were quite heavily oversubscribed which resulted in the team making the decision to increase the length of the conference from two and a half days to three full days. BeaconHouse were great at keeping the schedule very flexible and we ended up booking the venue for the full week, just as a contingency plan if we did run over with the volume of abstracts being presented.

We were conscious that we needed break-out spaces for conversations to happen and where people could digest complex information, and the venue (the Frederick Douglass Centre) lent itself to that perfectly. We were aware that it was a packed programme so as well as the breakout spaces where people could meet in small groups to talk, we made sure that there was a designated quiet room where delegates could take some time away from the main conference if needed too. We also created an LGBTQIA+ safe space where anyone who identified as part of this community could meet other peers working or studying in the field.

This is a tried and tested conference, how did you make sure that BAMC 2024 was a unique experience? 

We worked very collaboratively with Katie and the team at BeaconHouse to bring ideas to the table, it was a very creative process to be part of. We held a minisymposium on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion which had not been seen at previous BAMC conferences and was really well received. This is something we should be discussing and addressing as a field and the delegate feedback was that they were grateful that EDI was included in the programme as a topic in its own right. The EDI symposium set the tone for the rest of the conference and people were very generous with their time and expertise. We also invited chairs for each presentation from the community which meant we had a real mix of people with established careers alongside people who were quite early-stage researchers which made the event a little more relaxed and gave people the confidence to speak up regardless of career stage or gender which was an evolution from past BAMC events and made it as inclusive as possible.

Conferences like this can be quite intimidating, especially for PHD students or postdocs who are presenting work, and one of the highlights for me was how inclusive and welcoming the whole environment had been designed to feel. Where the BeaconHouse team was fantastic was pushing and challenging us on sustainability. We aimed to make the carbon footprint of the event as low as possible which meant we had to interrogate every aspect of the conference that might have an impact on that. For the first time at a BAMC event all of the catering was vegetarian or vegan, and while we were initially worried about how that might go down with meat-eaters, actually people understood and embraced what we were trying to do and the positive feedback reflected that.

What has the legacy of this BAMC been so far?

One of the really positive spin-offs from the EDI session was a group of LGBTQIA+ community members meeting and going on to set up a network to support applied mathematicians in their community. They had a working lunch as part of the conference and that was the first-ever meeting of a brand-new network that has now been established to support applied mathematicians who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community across the whole of the UK. This was never something that was planned or on our agenda but an organic thing that is a real testament to the power of events and having the opportunity to connect with others.

Planning an event can be stressful. What was the relationship with BeaconHouse during this process? 

This is the first time that I have been heavily involved in something like this and we couldn’t have been more supported by Katie during the process. I had a weekly half-hour meeting with Katie each week to touch base and make sure that both sides were on track with what needed to be delivered. While we had a plan, we also had the flexibility to change and adjust things during the process which was appreciated, and I knew that the team at BeaconHouse was all over detail as things changed and flexed as we got closer to the event; that weekly meeting meant we could react to things in real-time and keep things moving.

As the event came closer the support from BeaconHouse ramped up and they brought in expertise that we just wouldn’t have thought of on our own. Katie was great at making sure that we had all of the speaker presentations in advance (something that doesn’t usually happen in the community and just alleviated so much stress on the day) and had such a professional and friendly way of communicating with us and with our speakers. Their approach made the event feel a lot more professional and ran so smoothly, just because of those seemingly small details that they took care of. Even when things were out of our control that didn’t go as planned, Katie and the team reacted in such a positive and solution-focused way which meant all of the delegates still had a fantastic and memorable experience.

Before an event, you have no idea how it is going to be received and the feedback on the professionalism of the event has been incredibly positive – several people have comment to myself and colleagues that BAMC 2024 was one of the best they have ever attended both in terms of scientific content, environment and organisation.

Find out more about how we brought BAMC to life and speak to the team about your event ideas email info@beaconhouse-events.com or call +44(0)191 691 3456.