From: <melanie_at_email.protected>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 13:33:11 +1000 (EST)

Greetings All,

Just some quick comments. Before we decide on which session to have I
think we need to know how many sessions there will be in total. We have
3.5 days for the conference, going on the schedule for last year's meeting
that gave 12 sessions including one on "The Future Face of Astronomy"
which included some educational stuff but was probably not enough for what
EPOC is proposing (it was only 20min long). Last year they had the Decadal
Review discussion at the end which ate up another couple of hours so
really we are looking at ~13, 1.5 hour sessions.

If we devote one session to education (which seems to have been agreed
upon), one to a PASA discussion and one to "Women in Astronomy" then we
only have 10 sessions left to discuss science (including the Gemini
session we have been asked to include). If invited talks are 20min, then
each session is basically one invited talk plus ~5 or so 15/10min talks.
That means we only have space for ~60 very short science presentations
whereas last year there were ~80 and even then many people missed out and
were relegated to a poster. Given they we have been mandated to include a
session on Gemini this will make it even harder to get a talk in the
general science sessions then previous years.

Given the above, I don't think we can do all of these proposed non-science
sessions.

I think the PASA discussion is important, but only if something happens as
a result of it. I have been to many discussions on PASA and I am sure this
one will be very similar to the rest, but unless the ASA council is
prepared to do something about the issues rather than defer them then I am
not sure this will be productive. In addition, if the ASA council did want
to do something they could include the PASA issue as a discussion item in
the actual AGM and put options to a vote. Having said that, I would rather
see this discussion happen at the ASA then elsewhere so if people feel
strongly about it then fair enough, but it would be nice if we could
minimise the time spent on it (particularly since most of this will have
been said before..). I would like to suggest we ask the council to arrange
for the pertinent information to be distributed to the membership before
the ASA so that people can make an informed contribution to the
discussion. This will also give people time to think about issues and how
they stand on the cost/benefit argument, rather than get all the facts
during the discussion when there is no time to consider and hence no
conclusions are reached. If the discussion were scheduled early in the
program it could then be an item on the AGM agenda to be put to a vote of
the membership if required.

With regard to the Women in Astronomy session, if it is over lunch as
Sarah suggested then it will not eat into the rest of the sessions and
that is fine, but if this is the case then I don't think it will achieve
the core objective of increasing the attendance at this session that some
people seem to desire. It will essentially then revert to a slightly more
formalised version of the women in astronomy lunches that have happened in
the past, which is fine but I did not think that was what people were
after... Also, since Sarah and Anne are going to the IAU session on this
topic, perhaps next years ASA might be a better place for a formalised
session on this as they can bring back data from Prague to add to the
discussion.

Finally, it was suggested that Mike Dopita give the Harley Wood Lecture
and I have no problem with that.

Cheers,

Melanie
Received on 2006-04-18 13:33:36