Bernoulli Society and IMS call for preliminary bids/expressions of interest from academics interested in running the Bernoulli–IMS World Congress at their institution in 2028.

The deadline for submission is March 31st, 2023. The location of the 2028 meeting will be announced during the 11th Bernoulli–IMS World Congress in Probability and Statistics in Bochum, Germany, in 2024.

The bids should be sent to the two society presidents, Adam Jakubowski adjakubo@mat.umk.pl and Peter Bühlmann peter.buehlmann@stat.math.ethz.ch; and copied to the two society presidents-elect, Victor Panaretos panaretos@epfl.ch and Michael Kosorok kosorok@unc.edu.

The following is an excerpt from the World Congress Handbook, and is intended to aid key potential organizers in formulating a preliminary proposal.

A preliminary bid should specify names and affiliations of academics who have provisionally agreed to serve on the Local Organizing Committee. It is important that this team contains sufficiently many energetic people to cover fully the oversight of this big event, but in particular the team should also include a couple of senior academics in probability and statistics who have strong research records and international profiles, and who are prepared to commit to ensure the proposed congress will successfully add great distinction to their institution. Note that in most cases the Local Organizing Committee will obtain the services of conference organizing professionals; however our experience is that it is important that the Local Organizing Committee is strong enough and proactive enough to work constructively and creatively with the professionals in administration of the congress.

IMS and Bernoulli Society are very willing to help in terms of offering relevant advice and experience; however primary responsibility for the event lies with the Local Organizing Committee—and also of course the primary credit.

The actual formation of the scientific programme is the responsibility of the Scientific Programme Chair, who will be appointed jointly by IMS and Bernoulli Society. Typically there is very close liaison between the Scientific Programme Chair and the Chair of the Local Organizing Committee: however programme formation activity typically occurs at a much later date (for the current Congress, from about 2.5 years beforehand).

It is helpful if preliminary bids contain information about the following:

• The proposed site for the congress. It is especially important to be clear about this if the proposed Local Organizing Committee involves names from across the immediate local region!

• A range of proposed dates (typically summer in northern hemisphere). The selection of this range should involve explicit consideration of various competing meetings and conferences around the world—to the extent that details are known at this advanced stage of planning.

• Consideration of likely attendance numbers: for this, and for much other relevant data, the World Congress history page of the Bernoulli Society will be very helpful https://www.bernoullisociety.org/history/53-general/202-history-of-the-bernoulli-society-world-congress.

• Meeting facilities: there needs to be access to a large auditorium potentially able to accommodate 700 attendees, in addition to an adequate supply of breakout rooms for smaller sessions, and good supply of space for fruitful discussions over tea/coffee.

• Accommodation: there needs to be a good supply of reasonably priced local accommodation. It is particularly helpful if some very cheap and basic accommodation is available, e.g. for younger colleagues.

• It is useful to supply cost estimates on venue rent, catering twice daily coffee breaks, office staff support, for a range of attendance from 500 to 700 participants.

• Based on the previous item, it is helpful to estimate a range of potential registration fees. As a very rough guide, registration fees should be loosely in line for example with those charged for the two series of European Meetings of Statisticians and Conferences on Stochastic Processes and Their Applications: https://www.bernoullisociety.org/meetings

Overall cost is a particularly sensitive issue to the IMS and Bernoulli Society members, who include both young academics with very limited access to research funds, and distinguished academics from majority world countries who also find it a great challenge to secure sufficient funding to attend meetings. Neither IMS nor Bernoulli Society are in a position to provide substantial financial support, though both organizations organize special invited lectures for the Congress, thus ensuring presence of very high-visibility speakers for whom the relevant society will pay registration, accommodation and transport. It is also possible that Bernoulli Society will separately sponsor a pre-meeting (organized entirely separately to the Congress) for career-young academics, and make some bursaries available for attendance at the pre-meeting and thus at the Congress.

There are of course many other issues to consider, e.g.:

* Accessibility of the academic venue, like walking distance from/to hotels, public transportation, etc;

* Possible sponsors, like local universities, societies, etc;

* Visa restrictions for participants from some countries;

* Space for book exhibitions.