Beginning in April, DAS will be holding our monthly General Meetings both in person and via Zoom simultaneously, because a perfect location has been secured for them at Regis University in northwest Denver. We’ve also shifted our monthly General Meetings to Monday evenings at 7:00 p.m. MT. Our first meeting will be on Monday, April 10, with the room opening at 6:30 p.m. and the meeting starting promptly at 7:00 p.m. We plan to finish by 9:00 p.m. to permit those who will be working the next day to get home in a timely manner.
For the last many months, the DAS Executive Board has been working on finding a hybrid meeting space that would permit us to have hybrid meetings, at which those who are comfortable meeting in person could do so, while those of you who would rather stay home and join online could continue to do so as well. However, during the search it became apparent that virtually every facility that we approached would not make space available during our customary Friday night time slot. In order to avoid conflicts with the Public Nights held at DU’s historic Chamberlin Observatory on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and the Astrophotography Special Interest Group meetings held on Wednesday evenings, Mondays were the only logical choice. During months when a meeting would fall on a holiday, we will shift these meetings to a Wednesday night, working around the ASIG meetings. This also decouples the General Meetings from the Lunar Calendar, which was causing many of our E-Board members and volunteers to have back-to-back events on Friday and Saturday nights, and frees them up for more social time with family and friends during the traditional time frame.
Our gracious host at Regis University is Dr. Frederick Gray, the chair of the Astronomy and Physics Department. Dr. Gray has become a member of DAS and is enthusiastic about having us meet on the campus. The parking is ample and free, the room is large with comfortable seating, twin projectors, a white board, Internet and audio, and is fully equipped for hybrid meetings. The DAS held an E-Board meeting there in February to test-drive the room, with some of us in-person and some at home, and it worked very well.
The university’s address is 3333 Regis Blvd., Denver 80221. However, the parking lot that we will be using is Lower Lot 4, which is accessed from Lowell Blvd. between 52nd and 53rd Avenues. The meeting room is Peter Claver Hall, Room 315. See the satellite map below. Upon entering the building, you will proceed through a cafeteria area, then turn right and go up the stairs to the right one floor to reach Room 315. We will do our best to have either signage or members standing by to guide people as they arrive for the first few meetings.
We are truly looking forward to seeing many of our DAS members and guests in person again, and being able to have those important conversations that we all have missed. So whether you can join us in person or via Zoom, please don’t miss our inaugural meeting at Regis University!