https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-34rhh-adb263
It was recently announced in the NY Times (When Sky & Telescope Had No Limit) that Sky & Telescope’s parent company F+W Media filed for bankruptcy. F+W will go to the auction block on May 30th, with a winner announced on June 4th. We can only hope that S&T will land well; either individually or as part of a conglomerate sale.—-more—-
For those of you who have little if any familiarity with the magazine, it’s impending doom may not seem all that portentous, but as both an amateur astronomer and long-time S&T Subscriber I can assure you that the loss would come as a grievous blow. The irony of it all is that while the magazine, itself, is profitable the auction will ultimately be about preserving F+W as a whole. As such, S&T’s future is anything but assured.
To be clear, I have every hope that S&T will be purchased. What I’m concerned about is it’s ongoing relevance and viability; something at this point that’s anybody’s guess.
As I say in the podcast “…we haven’t figured out what…” we, the self-styled Friends of Sky & Telescope (FOST) can do to be of service, but there are plans in the works. Listen in and if you’re interested in joining our rag-tag group of S&T enthusiasts, do reach out (louis@squideyess.com).
Andy Schwam is a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP (since 2010) and ASP Insider. He is an experienced speaker, trainer, blogger, and conference organizer. As AVP Enterprise Architecture, he is responsible for moving the IT department forward through the use of new technology, best practices, DevOps and the Cloud. Additionally, Andy is a founding board member and organizer of TechBash, an annual conference for developers. He has been creating software applications since 1999. 
Rich Ross is Technology Architect at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Philadelphia. He spends much of his time talking to customers about their challenges, architecting Azure solutions and building innovative applications to showcase technologies. Rich has more than 25 years of business and IT experience in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. He is a contributor to many local user groups including Philly.net and TriState SharePoint. Rich also helps to organize and run Philly .net Code Camp, a bi-annual event for developers and businesses in the Mid-Atlantic area.