The conference is next in a sequence that commenced with Park City and Rio de Janeiro FoCM meetings. The format will be similar: plenary invited lectures in the mornings, theme-centred parallel workshops in the afternoons. Each workshop will be three-days' long, and the conference will consist of three `periods', each of three days, comprising different themes. Some participants might choose to attend just one or two `periods' but, on past experience, the greatest benefit follows from attending the conference for the full ten days.

The choice of speakers in a workshop is the responsibility of workshop organisers. On past experience, many (but by no means all) speakers were invited. However, if you wish to present a high-quality talk, there is no need to wait for an invitation! You may approach directly the relevant workshop organisers.

Former FoCM conferences proved themselves as a unique meeting point of workers in computational mathematics and of theoreticians in mathematics and in computer sciences. While presenting plenary talks by foremost world authorities and maintaining the highest technical level in the workshops, the emphasis in Park City and Rio de Janeiro was on multidisciplinary interaction across subjects and disciplines, in an informal and friendly atmosphere. We hope and expect to build upon this tradition in Oxford.