JENAM2010 - The European Week of Astronomy and Space Science
JENAM 2010 the annual European astronomers meeting, took place at Lisbon during the week of 6 to 10 September. This meeting joined more than 600 attendees from all parts of the world.
The most important points were related to the science and challenges that future projects will bring, namely with E-ELT, ALMA, and SKA. Another high moment was the lecture about the hypotheses of the constant variability by the Portuguese cosmologist João Magueijo.
As in the last year at JENAM 2009 in Hertfordshire , a session on ProAm in astronomy also took place (SPS8). About this session I feel a bit frustrated as I took conscience of a semantic issue on the term "ProAm". The term must be well established before any other action as being presented to IAU, otherwise I don't see big future on it. From my part, I agree with the definition given by Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller:
From the book The Pro-Am Revolution
of Charles Leadbeater e Paul Miller
2004
<<<Pro-Am, amateurs who work to professional standards.
The Pro-Ams are knowledgeable, educated, committed and
networked, by new technology. The twentieth century was shaped by
large hierarchical organisations with professionals at the top. Pro-
Ams are creating new, distributed organisational models that will be
innovative, adaptive and low-cost. An outstanding example of how
Pro-Ams are transforming a field is astronomy.
Pro-Ams are not professionals. They do not see themselves that way.
They do not earn more than 50 per cent of their income from their
Pro-Am activities. They might be aspiring proto-professionals,
semi-professionals
or former-professionals, but they would not be regarded
as full professionals.
Yet to call Pro-Ams amateurs is also misleading.
Pro-Ams force us to distinguish ‘serious’ leisure – which requires
regular commitment, skills and effort – from ‘casual’ leisure, which is
more occasional and opportunistic.>>>
For more information about this meeting, follow this
link