President’s Message – January 2012

Posted by as President's Message

Happy New Year to everyone. Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? I know I have a list but, unfortunately, some of mine have been broken already. Holiday treats just get the better of me every year. Two resolutions that I do have, though, are to “play” around a bit more with some astrophotography this year and to check off significantly more Messier objects. Here’s hoping the weather improves enough to see these through.

But what about resolutions for the RASC Victoria Centre? Here are two that I think are worthy of attention:

As mentioned in the December Skynews, one initiative I would like to see is a gradual increase in our membership over the year. We would like to encourage new people to join, and to keep our already dedicated members involved and supported so that they continue to enjoy the benefits of the RASC. Do you have some suggestions for reaching out in new ways, or different directions to bring new people into the group? How can we publicize our meetings and events to a wider public? How can we have our current members become more involved at our observatory, or at Astronomy Day or the summer Star Party? How can we better share the load of volunteering at public events? Would you like to see changes in format or presentation at meetings? Should we be using more social media? Please make your thoughts and suggestions known to me or to another member of council so that we can always be making improvements in our planning, communications and programming.

The other initiative that is important this year is to work toward having Cattle Point in Oak Bay designated as an Urban Sky Park by the National RASC. If we are successful it will be one of the only Urban areas designated in Canada and should be a valuable site for members and the public to enjoy astronomical explorations close to home. The Light Pollution Abatement Committee has a lot of work ahead but we hope we can rely on your support in our requests to municipal or regional Councils or to help out when we organize public programming at the site.

There are lots of other events we are looking forward to this year and I could make a good long list of other resolutions that we could work on but I believe that these are two initiatives that are both important and have a good chance of being successful. We will check things out in twelve months’ time to see how effective we were.

Now, if only I could be as successful about my own resolution on losing some weight! Sigh……..

Good Luck to all of you this year and, as always, clear skies.

Lauri Roche

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