June 2012

This month I am going to depart from the usual format of this Letter and report on some of the ways we are organizing to better serve the membership.

The first of these is to focus the attention of management on areas that directly affect Members: the format and content of the regular meetings; the creation or augmentation of other group activities; improved access to the instruments; the creation of programs that appeal to younger people; and the creation or extension of initiatives to raise the level of understanding of astronomy of all members.

The second of these is to determine ways to secure the financial underpinnings of the Society. For several years the annual budget has been sized to just get by. When there is only enough money available to support current activities any new ideas that surface face a strong headwind. This is not a healthy situation and ways to improve it must be found and implemented.

The third is to develop succession planning. Most years the Nominating Committee has great difficulty finding even one candidate for each position. This leads to a situation where people are slotted into positions for which they may not be comfortably prepared. It is a tribute to the dedication of these people that they take on a job for which they are apprehensive and do their best for Skyscrapers.

The fourth is to find ways to grow the membership without diluting the focus on high quality programming and professional level instrumentation and observing. While there are those who boast that during their administration membership was much higher than it is now, an examination of the membership rolls reveals that membership has been essentially flat for more than a decade. Many organizations have lost members in that period but standing still is not good enough for a dynamic organization and we can do better.

Today I want to discuss one of the most visible changes that is resulting from the above, that is the regular meeting format. For as long as I have been a member of Skyscrapers there has been a tension between the objective of high quality professional level presentations and reports of members' observing and other activities. Some of us value highly the professional presentations, others find them over their head or otherwise undesirable and want the meeting devoted to members talking about their experiences. The approach thus far has been to have two kinds of meetings to allow for this duality of interests. In all cases there was also a business session that saw the departure of 60- to 70-percent of the attendees for lack of interest.

The new format addresses both sets of wishes: borrowing from the Figure Skating model each meeting will consist of a “Long Program” and one or two “Short Programs”, and no business session unless absolutely necessary. The Long Program will be … well, longer. It will consist of a professional level presentation (this usually but not always means a professional scientist; we have members who give professional level presentations, Gerry Dyck comes immediately to mind here). The Short Program(s) will be about 10 to 20 minutes and will not be expected to be as polished as a Long Program but should be on a topic that is relevant and interesting. This should encourage those who are uncomfortable giving a formal talk to come forward and share what they are doing with the rest of us.

Observing after the meeting will be strongly encouraged. Since a business session will not have driven off two thirds of the attendees, one hopes that the observatory will be more used while members are right there anyway.

After we have been through a number of meetings with this new format we will review the experience and see if adjustments are desired.

In coming issues of The Skyscraper I will bring to your attention more details about how each of these focus areas is being approached and the officers and committee chairs will have reports of their individual areas of responsibility. Reducing the business meetings means we have to find new ways of effectively communicating with the membership. More reports in the newsletter is one way, the imminent unveiling of a new website which will make it easier to include topical information is another.

Thanks for all you do for Skyscrapers.