Changes: Now and Coming

Greetings, LPV Observers! Some of you may already be aware that there are changes coming to the AAVSO webpages regarding communications and the sections (at a minimum). First, I want to let you know of an immediate and important update. The LPV Section once again has science advisors who are very much important and highly valued. Dr. John Percy, emeritus professor of the University of Toronto, is once again a key member of the LPV section. John has been actively involved with the AAVSO for decades. Our second advisor is Dr. Joyce Guzik of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and is a highly regarded researcher of pulsating variable stars (short period and long period) going back to the early1980s. She has a long term relationship with the AAVSO. Now to the upcoming changes. The AAVSO is going to embark on a campaign to greatly reduce its global website in size. Right now, AAVSO presides over a web empire of sorts of about a half million webpages. This has become too expensive and labor intensive to maintain. So, a downsizing will soon be underway to deal with this situation and yet maintain the mission of the AAVSO (we're talking about a few 10 thousands of pages). I think the idea is to cut the editorial fluff and fat but keep the meat (apologies to vegetarians and vegans). Not a trivial task. For the LPV Section we will likely see a much more relevant, up to date, section webpage. I've already requested that some links to old stuff be deleted. Also, I will be posting to the AAVSO Communications newsletter increasingly often. To this point I've been using the Forum (the forums as they now exist will be replaced with some software package that should make the forums a much better platform than exist now).  Until recently I seriously considered publishing a monthly newsletter, but now think the Communications letter will be a better option. Long, detailed postings, not well suited for Communications, will be posted directly, upfront under the new section webpage. My desire is to begin posting more about observing, research topics, note worthy stars of interest, etc. than have been done in the past few years. There is more to come shortly. Mike, LPV Section Leader