The organisers of the MaGIC 2023 Manifolds and Geometric Integration Colloquium in Ilsetra hotel, Øyer, Norway report in ECMI’s blog on the history of the MaGIC colloquia and on the first days of MaGIC 2023 which is nwt 9c of THREAD’s network wide training programme. Their post is reproduced here (with permission):

"The first time we organised MaGIC it was in 1999 in Ustahoset, Norway. The group of participants was not very big and we all lived in the cabin of the University of Bergen, Ottesheimen. We cooked our own meals, shared rooms, and had to queue for the bathroom. In the evenings, after the talks, we played card games and entertained each other with stories, beer and chips. MaGIC was an initiative of the University of Bergen and NTNU, with Antonella, Brynjulf, Elena and Hans as the core organisers, and we kept going for all these years. Many guests have visited us in Norway to participate to this small, informal, annual workshop, where mathematical collaborations and research exchanges were the endeavour of morning and evening and skying and outdoor activities occupied the middle of the day.

Since then MaGIC has been organised in many different locations in Norway: Sjusjøen, Geilo, Vatnahalsen, Rondablikk, Atnasjøen, Røros, Hornsjøen, Myrkdalen, Meråker and Ilsetra. One time we organised the conference in Italy, in Renon, near Bolzano, another time we all travelled down under to Mistletoe Bay in New Zealand. 

MaGIC is an event for PhD students and Postdoctoral fellows with focus on the results achieved in their projects. They practice presentation and communication in a relaxed and friendly setting.

This year MaGIC is organised from the 27th of February to the 3rd of March. The number of participants is record high, and not everybody will be able to give a talk. But there is plenty of snow for skying and good mood.

To celebrate the 25 years of MaGIC we will organise a special issue in the Journal of Computational Dynamics with title Mechanics, computation, and their mathematical foundations.

The first day of MaGIC 2023, was full of brilliant talks. Sigrid Leyendeker opened the programme with an overview of the work on variational integrators and structure preserving algorithms of her group in Friedrich Alexander University at Erlangen-Nuremberg. Seven young researches, from Norway and Sweden followed and gave excellent talks on a variety of topics. The full programme of the meeting can be found at the webpage of the conference."

Contributed by the MaGIC 2023 organisers: Antonella Zanna, Brynjulf Owren, Elena Celledoni and Hans Munthe-Kaas