My time in the IUCr Meeting Support Committee (MSC)

In the 25th General Assembly of the IUCr in Prague in August 2021, I got elected to the IUCr Executive Committee (EC). Little did I know back then what the following years had in store for me. In the first meeting of the old and the new EC right after the congress, I was assigned as EC representative to the Sub-Committee of the Union Calendar, as it was called at the time, also known as the Calendar Committee. This committee is an advisory committee to the EC; it assesses applications from organizers of schools, workshops and conferences around the world for IUCr support, and it makes funding recommendations to the EC. The chair of the Calendar Committee at the time was Graciela Delgado. Graciela consulted me now and then for one event or another, but she did most of the work, which was mostly invisible to me.

A year later, during the EC meeting in Versailles, I succeeded Graciela as the chair of the committee. At the same time, the EC proposed changing the name of the committee to better reflect what it was doing. This is when the name Meeting Support Committee (MSC) was coined. All of a sudden it was me who received all the applications for events as well as inquiries from applicants about funding applications that had already been submitted, and I found myself seemingly in the line of fire. Sure, some rather old guidelines were available, but I realized that I had to quickly find my own way of dealing with all that in order to avoid making applicants frustrated or angry and to avoid complete chaos. It took several weeks of work, of organizing myself, and many emails going back and forth between Graciela and myself, before I could comfortably say that I had gained some level of control over things.

Now (in August 2025), three years and 83 processed applications later, I can confidently say that I understand the intricacies of the MSC much better. I have also learned a lot. I have learned how important it is to interact with the applicants to help them prepare better applications. I have learned how important it is to involve all the MSC members and listen to them, because there may be different views on things. I have learned that there is no point in insisting on rules. Finally, I have learned that the most important thing is to maximize the happiness level of the applicants by ensuring that the limited funds available are distributed fairly and according to the needs, because it is these many course organizers who undertake the tasks to plan, organize and hold courses, workshops, conferences, etc. and provide training and education to the next generation of structural scientists.

With that, I would like to close, and I would like to thank all the people who have accompanied me during the just-finished three-year journey as chair of the MSC, and all the members of the MSC of course, old and new, for their discussions and advices. Also, the organizers of the 83 events, who had to bear with me when I was too pushy or not fast enough, and the people behind the scenes who assigned me to this task. And of course also the IUCr, which sets aside a significant amount of money to support events around the world. I am now ready to hand over the chair of the MSC to my successor, Maria Cristina Nonato. Good luck Cristy and have lots of fun!