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Thanks everybody! That was hands down the most fun and wonderful thing I've been to since my wedding! We sold out and 400 people joined us in the lap of luxury at the Elements of Byron resort. The venue was perfectly positioned with mostly low impact lighting on the easternmost and thoroughly dark edge of Australia. The food was unbelievable. Anyone staying at the resort itself was treated to a luxury experience and we just got dumb lucky with the weather. The saturday night star gazing was incredible.
The Southern Astronomical Society were the glue that held the whole thing together and the speakers were so amazing. Furthermore, most of the speakers stayed and listened to every other speaker! I gave a talk on astrophotography with Dr David Malin watching - good lord! (I asked him later if I'd said anything incorrect and he verified I hadn't ... phew).
Highlights for me included 160 people singing Happy Birthday to Mike Smith the founder of Bintel and acknowledging his recent stroke and 32 years of service to the astronomy community and hanging out and stargazing with Dr Alan Duffy. It was such an intimate and wonderful setting that the speakers themselves simply joined all the rest of us for the whole thing. Truly wonderful. We even did a live national broadcast on channel 9 on Sunday morning!
We learned some lessons and the venue has heard our feedback about the speed of catering and some of the logistics, but mostly everything was run to minute precision. We gave away 5 telescopes and made enough money to fund a planetarium for a poor school in Western Sydney for which they are truly grateful.
I'm inspired to repeat this in 2018 and though I can't guarantee the weather I can do my best to pull off everything else. Thank you to all the Ice in Space members who made it - I couldn't have done it without your support.
Dylan.
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