CMS Winter 2006 Session on Knot Homologies

This is an information page for the session on Knot Homologies in the Canadian Mathematical Society Winter 2006 Meeting in Toronto.

The current list of speakers is:

1. Carmen Caprau (Iowa) - half hour, accepted, maybe just Sat-Sun.
2. Olivier Collin (UQAM) - 1 hour, accepted.
3. Joel Kamnitzer (MIT) - 1-hour, accepted.
4. Mikhail Khovanov (Columbia) - 1 hour, will try to make it.
5. Peter Lee (Toronto) - half hour, accepted.
6. Robert Lipshitz (Columbia) - 1 hour, accepted.
7. Gad Naot (Toronto) - half hour, accepted.
8. Juan Ariel Ortiz-Navarro (Iowa) - half hour, accepted, maybe just Sat-Sun.
9. Jake Rasmussen (Princeton) - 1 hour, accepted.
10. Lev Rozansky (UNC) - 1 hour, accepted.
11. Paul Seidel (Chicago) - 1 hour, accepted, maybe just Sat-Sun.
12. Adam Sikora (Buffalo) - 1 hour, accepted.
13. Robb Todd (Iowa) - half hour, accepted, maybe just Sat-Sun.

We have a total of 3 half hour speaking slots and 11 one hour speaking slots (that can be subdivided). Two of the 1-hour slots begin at 8:30AM. All other slots are later than 9:30AM.

2nd Letter

Dear Speakers and Potential Speakers,

A few more words about the CMS Winter 2006 Session on Knot Homologies in
Toronto on December 9-11 -

As I wrote on the initial invitation, we only have a tiny budget to run
this session - about $3,000 to divide between around 10 speakers. This
means very little for each one of you, I'm afraid. If this scares you out,
say so now and don't hold a grudge against me later!

On the other hand, I think we have an excellent group of speakers (see
http://katlas.math.toronto.edu/drorbn/index.php?title=CMS), so the
meeting itself should be FUN.

Now for the technicalities -

1. The powers above me request that you submit your abstract by October 15
(i.e., in about two weeks) at
http://www.cms.math.ca/Events/winter06/announce.e#abs_sub. The punishment
for not doing so will be that your abstract may not appear in the official
program. This of course will not prevent it from appearing on our
"internal" wiki site.

2. You are requested to register at
http://www.cms.math.ca/Events/winter06/announce.e#registration by November
5. Please do so and pay the registration fees as on the web, and note that
I after I refund those I'll have a lot less money to play with.

3. Find yourself a hotel room as on
http://www.cms.math.ca/Events/winter06/announce.e#accommodation and book
it by November 15. If you need my help with choices or with further
choices, you know how to reach me. There are also much cheaper and
lower-grade places available. Scott Morrison stayed in one of those three
times and seemed happy and undamaged. His place is at
http://www.affordacom.com/home.htm; it is within the lovely Kensington
Market neighborhood, within 5 minutes walk from my house and from the math
department and the Fields Institute, and within 20 minutes walk from the
conference site.

4. Book your flights and let me know their dates/times. No deadline.

Best,

Dror.

1st Letter

Shalom ***,

I'd like to invite you to give a one hour talk in the topology/knot theory
session of the Winter Meeting of the Canadian Mathematical Society, to be
held in Toronto on December 9-11, 2006.

Note that despite the wide title of our session, I plan to make it quite
focused, with most talks on or around knot homologies and with a relatively
small (10-12) number of speakers. So you should think of the meeting more
as a "workshop" than as a "session in an AMS conference". Though to cut
costs, I'm presently inviting only people from the northeast, which is
generalized to also include Chicago, North Carolina and eastern Canada.

We will have around $3,000 overall to support the speakers. This is not
enough to pay for all expenses, but you can assume that at least some of
your expenses will be covered.

Toronto's the second nicest city in the world and I'm sure you'll enjoy the
meeting!

Lehitraot,

Dror.

0th Letter

Shalom Friends,

This is not an invitation nor an announcement, just a call for your
opinion. I was asked to organize a session in the Canadian Mathematical
Society (CMS) meeting in Toronto, Dec 9-11 2006. I didn't accept or
decline yet, but I will do so in 2-3 days and I'd like to get your
opinions before deciding.

My idea is to "hijack" the session and to organize it as a mini-workshop
similar in style and content to the workshop Olivier Collin organized a
few months ago in Montreal (thus the people receiving this message are the
east-coast speakers from Montreal, and forgive me if I forgot anyone).

More details: We'll have time for 8-9 one hour talks; a part of that
(maybe 2 hours) will have to go to other parts of topology. We'll be able
to split some of those to two half-hour talks (in fact, this seems to be
the standard in CMS meetings, but I'd like to have as many longer talks as
possible). I/we will have $2,500 from the CMS plus a small amount from my
grant. So we will have to restrict to people from the east coast and even
they may not get full support.

So what do you think? Should I bother? Would you come? At this time
neither this letter nor your response to it will be binding in any way.

Lehitraot,

Dror.