The fulldome digital planetarium is here to stay. What was once next-generation technology is the standard of today, and a fleet of digital-dome natives is taking leadership and management roles at domes around the world. IPS’s relevancy hinges not only in embracing and encouraging forthcoming technological developments, but embracing the planetariums and planetarians of today.
What can IPS offer?

IPS was founded as the International Society of Planetarium Educators, although the name was quickly changed to the International Planetarium Society, the variety of career paths and skillsets within the planetarium professional have not always found representation or value in IPS. Special interest conferences have cropped up in the industry to support technical and production-oriented planetarians, and discuss the variety of content that can now be presented and developed for dome theaters. These conferences provide intersections for planetarians with producers of immersive content, engineers of new technologies, architects of a variety of venues, and artists seeking to explore the dome space.
IPS’s strongest strength to relevancy and embracing current-generation and future planetarians may lie in its ability to act as a nexus for the planetarium profession. As a general conference for the planetarium profession it not only hast he ability to bring together planetarians and research astronomers, as it has through its history, but link together educators, producers, engineers, presenters, architects—everyone who works in, with and for dome theaters. By diffusing content from special-interest conferences, like LIPS, IMERSA, planetarium software users groups and production open houses, IPS can expose all planetarians to new techniques, technologies and information, especially those who can’t or would not attend other conferences. It also gives those invested in these special interests a chance to extend the breadth and depth of their special interests in dome theater and provide more feedback from the dome community as a whole. Producers can gain valuable insight in the types of programs planetarians want or need to run (including the need to meet educational standards). Educators can be exposed to the variety of content teachable in the dome theater, and how new technologies can enhance the experience for themselves and their audiences. Technical staff be encouraged in being a part of the innovative process of refining the planetarium and dome theater, and bringing the latest advancements from other immersive fields into their dome theaters.

IPS should thus position itself as a nexus for all interests dome related, and conferences (and IPS media, such as the Planetarian, as well as facebook and twitter) need to be intersectional spaces where the variety of dome interests can mingle, educate, learn from and enhance each other. This nexus is IPS’s unique offering in the community and should be leveraged towards ensuring its future relevance.

IPS should be inclusive it needs to not only be of interest, but also accessible to all planetarians, and not a playground for large domes. In his keynote at the 50th anniversary of GLPA, Von Del Chamberlain, founder of GLPA and IPS, quoted the directors of the nations largest planetariums’ attitudes to smaller domes cropping up at that time: “perhaps if we ignore them, they’ll just go away.” IPS, its affiliates and its members need to recognize there is a place for all planetariums in the advancement of the profession, but that also means making IPS, its publications, resources and events accessible to all planetarians. This means affordable, accessible events, representative leadership, and awareness that affordable fulldome technology has also suffused small theaters and they benefit as much from the intersection of dome interests as large domes. Large domes need to also realize that they too can benefit from techniques tried and tested and more mobile, small venues—while small domes can also benefit from the experiences of their larger companions. But this can only happen if everyone is at the table, working together for a common good—the advancement of the planetarium profession and the improved experience of the global planetarium audience.

IPS leadership needs to be representative, transparent and offer clear opportunities to involve diverse, large group of planetarians. Jim Sweitzer’s Vision2020 white paper identifies the perception that IPS is an “old boys’ club” and correctly notes, whether true or false, acts as a discouragement to involvement of new planetarians. Combating this perception should be one of IPS’s highest priorities. IPS’s needs to raise awareness of opportunities for involvement with the organization, and also the profile of all contributors. This doesn’t just mean affiliate representatives and the leadership council—creating more opportunities to support IPS’s committees and media in acknowledged, useful positions can expand the group involved in the organization and provide greater awareness of planetarians that should be considered for higher leadership positions in the future. Jim correctly identifies “stepping up IPS’s social media presence”—an expanded group managing IPS’s social media can enhance its visibility, relevance and usefulness, while providing multiple planetarians an avenue to involve themselves in the organization and practice media management skills useful in their own institutions. IPS should ensure all committees contain a diverse group of members, with minimal overlap with the leadership council and affiliate representatives.

IPS should provide reference material. If the organization becomes well positioned as an intersection of interests as above, it can pursue another valuable role: providing reference material for planetarium design, renovation and improvement. If IPS can stay relevant with the continuous stream of advancing technology, technique and science, IPS can offer informative material for its own members as they pursue enhancements or redevelopment of their theaters, as well as member institutions, their leadership and their contractors, providing positive examples from other domes. This committee needs to not only be concerned with the cutting edge of technology, but also in how inexpensive, trickle-down tech can benefit smaller planetariums. IPS should expand and enhance its operations and design committee to further this goal and should become known as a real resource for this material.

IPS can enhance planetarium content. Many of IPS’s affiliates fund or sponsor content production and distribution to enhance the availability of quality, affordable content for their domes. IPS can also introduce a grant program to fund or distribute dome shows that are of particular relevance and interest to their community (provided an appropriate and impartial review process). This content need not be limited to rendered dome productions, but should extend to making a wide variety of quality content available and accessible to all planetarians. It should allow IPS to advocate for interests of its members—and the planetarium community as a whole—for content that meets their needs, while simultaneously introducing the community to the variety and diversity of content that can be presented in their theaters. Support of the Data Visualization Taskforce can let IPS empower members to have better access to content for developing their own stories with high-quality resources.

IPS should leave no one behind. Although fulldome video technology is becoming ever more prevalent, traditional opto-mechanical domes, accompanied by video and slide projectors remain a substantial part of the community. It should be remembered the planetarium and dome theater are evolving tools in all of their dimensions, and all planetarians need to be invited to conversations about technology, but also recipients of its benefits. Traditional theaters need to feel they can also benefit from being introduced to new, accessible, affordable technologies that can be integrated to enhance their domes. Production and educational techniques can also be shared between theater types. The conversation about dome technology isn’t just about finding the “best” projector—it’s about the variety of technology and interfaces that enhance the planetarium experience, and all planetariums and planetarians can bring something to and take something away from this conversation.

I feel obliged to provide a final note—Jim Sweitzer identified Personal Virtual Reality Devices as an “elephant in the room” that will create a new, competitive market with the dome theater. IPS’s role may be in working with the entire dome community it helping domes to recognize: planetariums offer a unique, shared evocative, emotional, immersive experience. By pursuing the goals above, IPS can enhance all planetarians ability to harness and leverage the unique experiences only the planetarium can offer, make them appealing to audiences and ensure planetariums remain an active, engaging environment long into the future.

Short Term actions:

  • Pursue mini-IMERSA and mini-LIPS (I think this is already planned) for 2016 IPS and conferences beyond.
  • Future IPS conferences should look into cross-interest sessions to connect non-experts in various categories (education, presentation, technology, production) with other special interest groups.
  • IPS should quickly expand media team, including additional social media managers.
  • IPS should provide more engagement and volunteer opportunities within the organization, ahead of, at and following the 2016 conference. A public list may prove a valued to committee chairs individually and privately recruiting known individuals (this prevents some diversity). (IPS already has the “get involved!” page on the site… but this just links to a list of committees and chairs. It does not clarify if any chairs are actually looking for additional committee members, not even what sort of work the committee members might expect to help out with!).
  • The IPS council should ensure all committees are actually multi-member committees and encourage chairs to recruit a diverse array of members from outside the council.
  • IPS’s Operations and Design Committee should review existing reference publications and consider where it might start publishing its own, or popularizing existing documents. IPS should ensure the Committee is large and diverse enough to handle these tasks.
  • IPS should throw stronger support behind the Data Visualization Taskforce and actively work with the Taskforce and leverage its membership to encourage vendors to adopt interchange standards for Data.
  • IPS should expand the capabilities of the website to assist with hosting and distributing Data Visualization Taskforce content to support its adoption.
  • IPS should investigate ways to maximize affordability and accessibility of conferences to all members. IPS should work with regional organizations to ensure they are productively engaging planetariums, providing similar utilities to IPS and acting as “feeders” into to the organization, and not turning planetarians off professional development.
  • The Planetarian should promote its unique content via social media (possibly even post web-versions of particularly relevant articles) to drive interest in IPS and its publications. Previews of the each Planetarian ahead of publication could be of value.
  • Term-limiting affiliate representatives may neither be effective, nor feasible given it may affect the by-laws of many affiliates. However, IPS should strongly consider term-limited appointed committee chairs to ensure opportunities for turnover and engagement.
  • To support maximum engagement, IPS should discourage members from holding multiple offices simultaneously whenever possible.