Regarding youth-friendly programs, I regret to say that ESSP 2024 will not feature any beyond what the simple experience of being at the rustic Montosa Camp can offer. Beyond the natural environment, the event will be for hard-core astronomy enthusiasts, most of whom will be tent camping between Juniper trees. (See photos posted above in this thread.)
Other annual events, like Stellafane in Vermont, are doing a great job to include special activities for kids. That organization, however, is a century old and has a much larger team of dedicated volunteers running it. 2024 will be ESSP's first time at the Montosa site, and we'll be learning a lot in the process. My own hunch is that the Camp will prove an ideal location for a long-running and ongoing star party. With the relatively high altitude, the dark skies, and the general freedom & elbow room, participants need only hope for luck with the weather. We've been unusually lucky with clear skies at ESSP in recent years.
I can share that our lineup of featured speakers is very good, and I'll report more about them as soon as possible. It's also working out that we'll have a cook operating the camp kitchen, which will allow a meal plan to be offered to registrants. I'll post more about that here when details are confirmed.
An example we're following from Stellafane, by the way, will be the option of informal, fast-paced contributed short talks on late Friday afternoon. In other words, if you are coming, please consider sharing a presentation about yourself, your astronomical interests, a work in progress, etc. These will run Friday starting at 5:00 PM, and similar to Stellafane, held to 12 minutes and/or 20 images. A windows PC and a full HDMI projector will be available. Register by contacting me, first-come first-served. (Informal presentations have been a very popular feature at Stellafane for many years.)
We also anticipate an excellent environment for an astronomical swap-meet running Saturday morning, October 5th.
--John W. Briggs,
ESSP Program Chair,
writing for Magdalena Astronomical Society, Inc.
