Seminar Schedule

Upcoming Planetarians' Zoom Seminars

2025

• 2025 Dec 12 (2nd Friday) at 2pm PST (5pm EST, 22:00 UT), People Management for the Planetarium with Mary Holt. As Planetarians advancing in our careers we typically find ourselves in the position of managing people. Mary recently experienced being a new manager and is very interested in learning how to be successful managing people throughout her career. In this presentation she will discuss her experience as a new people manager, but also share insights from interviews with over twenty Planetarians with a wide variety of experience levels and management styles about their experiences managing and being managed. She will explore themes common across our field and suggest some potential areas of success and improvement for fellow managers. Mary Holt worked at The Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley California for about a year and a half. Before that she was at California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco for about 8.5 years. Her family is from the Bay Area but she grew up in Michigan and attended college at University of Michigan, which is where her planetarium career started back in 2010. 

• 2026 Jan 30 at 11am PST (2pm EST, 19:00 UTC), The Cosmos Must Be Searchable: Advertising Planetarium Programming in the Age of AI and Algorithms with Shanil Virani. We now live in a world where AI answers the questions people once typed into Google, and where visibility is no longer automatic but something we must intentionally design. For many planetarium educators, especially those wearing many hats or working solo, navigating the world of SEO, Facebook Pixel, sponsored posts, and digital discoverability can feel overwhelming… and exhausting. This seminar is your beginner-friendly guide to making your planetarium programming findable—whether by search engines, social media, or large language models like ChatGPT and Perplexity. I’ll share what I’ve had to learn while running the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s digital ad campaigns (despite that not being my formal job!), including pragmatic tools, hard-won lessons, and low-effort strategies that actually work. Whether you’re wondering why your content doesn’t show up in search, or what it takes to boost your reach without breaking the bank, this is your survival guide to the age of AI-powered discovery—and how to ensure the cosmic stories you tell in your dome can still be found. Shanil Virani is the Cosmic Engagement Specialist at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, where he leads initiatives focused on emerging technologies—AI, VR, smart telescopes—and curates immersive, student-centered workshops on astronomy education and cultural sky traditions for both formal and informal educators. A professional astronomer and veteran science communicator, Shanil has taught for more than 30 years at both the high school and university levels. He also hosts the Our Island Universe podcast and writes regularly on Medium about astronomy, emerging technologies, and the role of science in public life—always with the goal of helping science be seen, heard, and remembered in a noisy digital world. 

2026

Dates and times subject to alteration depending on availability of presenters.

• 2026 Feb 27

• 2026 Mar 27

• 2026 Apr 24

• 2026 May 29

• 2026 Jun 26