I’m sitting here in Munich’s airport waiting for my flight back to the U.S. and thinking about the wonderful time I’ve had this past week at the European Southern Observatory’s sponsored meeting “Communicating Astronomy With the Public.” It brought together 120 or so scientists, writers, animators, and others to discuss how science communication in our discipline of astronomy is going, how it can be improved, and what some future trends are going to be.

Rather than try to summarize all the really great stuff, I’m going to send you to the website for the meeting, which has video captures of all our presentations (I talked about planetariums and their role in communicating astronomy), plus copies of most of the powerpoint presentations given in the meeting. You can see the program with links to the talks, video sessions, and powerpoints at the CAP programme page.

I found the meeting to be really helpful, had a chance to get together with many old friends, and some of my clients; as well, it was fun to meet some new folks and swap ideas!