The Exhibit Hall will open for all meeting attendees from Sunday, January 10 at 11:00am EST through Friday, January 15 at 6:30 pm EST. You should have at least one booth rep watching the chat room throughout the meeting day 12:00am-6:30pm EST.

The following times are designated for attendees to visit the exhibitors, so plan on having a fully staffed booth. All times are EASTERN STANDARD TIMEZONE

• Sunday
  • 11:00am-3:00pm
• Monday
  • 2:40pm-3:10pm
  • 4:10pm-5:40pm
• Tuesday
  • 2:40pm-3:10pm
  • 4:10pm-5:40pm
• Wednesday
  • 2:40pm-3:10pm
  • 4:10pm-5:40pm
• Thursday
  • 2:40pm-3:10pm
  • 4:10pm-5:40pm
• Friday
  • 2:40pm-3:10pm
  • 4:10pm-5:40pm

The booth contents will be available for 30 days following the meeting to meeting attendees.

When a visitor to your booth enters your chat room, you will see they are in the chat room and you will hear an audio notification, assuming you are logged in as a booth rep. 

You can then answer their questions, or initiate a chat with them. You will then be able to begin an audio or video 1:1 chat with the visitor.

Slack notifications will let you know if someone has left you a message in your channel.

Visitors can view all the materials you have uploaded to your booth, watch your videos, visit your links, etc.

If no one is in your chat room, they can click on Chat Timings and schedule a time to meet with you.

Make sure you leave plenty of information about when your staff will be at the booth, what special events or webinars you are hosting, what sessions or Town Halls your institution is participating in and what oral talks or iPosters are representing your organization.

Group chats are available with the text chat feature, audio and video chat is only one on one.

Using your Zoom Room allows you to have a face-to-face group meeting.

Conversations can occur over Slack for multiple staff and attendees.

Exhibiitor webinars will allow you to have face to face group meetings using audio and video.

The role of a Booth Rep is VERY LIMITED.

The Booth Rep will receive a special login and password that is setup by the booth organizer. This will give them access to wait in the booth chat room for any visitors to their booth and engage with them in text, audio or video chats. 

The Booth Rep will not be able to visit other exhibits, attend sessions or go to other locations in the venue.

If anyone on your staff is acting in the role as a Booth Rep and they wish to attend more of the meeting, they will need to register for the entire virtual meeting at our website https://aas.org/meetings/aas237/register

We will host a Hands-on Training: Exhibitor Booth Rep in order to make exhibit booth reps familiar with their environment and get used to entering the system, identifying when visitors come to your chatroom, initiating chats, inviting attendees to participate in a voice or video call and collect contact info.

There is one training session, but it will be repeated two times. We will also post a recording for on demand viewing.

• Tuesday, January 5 - 9:00 AM ET
• Wednesday, January 6 - 3:00 PM ET

We will also host Exhibitor Webinar Training, training and practice session for exhibitors that are presenting webinars. This training will take place on:

• Tuesday, January 5 - 3:00 PM ET
• Wednesday, January 6 - 9:00 AM ET

You can have as many as you want.

Full meeting attendees should use a different email address when their name is entered in the Booth Staff list in vFairs.

Packages of 5 Booth Staff were sold to exhibitors. Please check your receipt for the number of JUST BOOTH STAFF you can add. If you have any questions about this, please contact Debbie Kovalsky, Director of Exhibits [email protected]

If booth reps wish to attend the meeting, they need to register as an individual at the AAS Registration Page.

The main booth contact received an introductory email with a link to your booth setup. This link allows you to choose your booth layout, upload graphics, documents, videos, links, documents, etc. to your booth. You can also provide the names of your booth reps. If someone is also registered to attend the meeting, you will want to use a different email address when signing them up to be a booth rep.

When you are finished editing, make sure you submit your booth design vFairs.

Once you have selected the images you want on your booth and uploaded them to vFairs, you can continue to upload documents and videos. Make sure you go to Step 7 and Submit to vFairs for Review/Publishing. 

Go to https://aas237.vfairs.com and use the Exhibitor Login to login with one of your Booth Rep usernames/passwords. Navigate to Hall, Exhibit Hall and find your booth to see how it will work.

The AAS is requesting that all exhibitors finish designing their booths and uploading their materials by December 23rd. This will give us plenty of time to test your site and prepare training materials for the week of January 1st. 

If you need to update an item after the 23rd, that will be fine, but it should be 'mostly' complete.

By the December 23rd deadline, EITHER the exhibitor is uploading their own images formatted correctly and all their docs/videos/links/etc OR they are sending stuff to vFairs and having them do it.

In either case, all that ‘stuff’ needs to be uploaded by 12/23. We several days to get it all built and tested and then we can turn around and do our training classes for the exhibitors with a live system.

Things can be tweaked in your exhibit after that deadline, but the hope is that everyone will be working on it up until then and not wait until that final day.

The Training Webinar: From Scientist to Salesperson provides many ideas to attract attendees to the activities at your booth. See the link at the top of this page.

AAS Sponsor and Exhibitor, STARtorialist.com has donated $25 Store Credits to every exhibitor to give away as prizes at the end of the week. You may use this as a prize for contests and games in your booth.

Gamification is very popular and the AAS will try and send people to your booth. 

Consider running your own contest, here are some ideas:

• Take a selfie/screenshot with someone famous at your institution using the video chat feature
• Enter to win a gift card by initiating a chat (daily drawings)
• Enter to win a prize (telescope, camera, book) initiating a chat
• Sign up to have something snail mailed
• Sign up for an interview or one-on-one training or demo
• Team up with other exhibitors and have attendees collect codes for a prize
• Send us some more ideas to add to this list!

You can have your booth background colors customized, during Step #2 in your booth setup, choose new colors for the booth back panel and front panel.

The deadline to submit custom avatars is December 10th.

The training sessions on January 5 & 6 will be hands-on.

Once you enter your Booth Staff username/passwords, you can log onto the system using one of those accounts.

• Go to https://aas237.vfairs.com
• Click on EXHIBITOR LOGIN
• Enter username/password
• In the Lobby, Click on the HALL in the top menu
• Choose EXHIBIT HALL
• Navigate to your Exhibit Booth
• Test the links

The exhibitor webinars will be run using Zoom Meeting. All presenters will receive a unique link from their webinar coordinator (via AAS). The presenters will share their screens to show any presentation software, videos, etc.

The audience members come into the webinar with video/audio/annotation/chat all OFF, but the presenter can request to turn everyone on, or some features.

During Q&A, the host will assist the presenter with the live Q&A either via text or video/audio.

You may not run over the 30 minute time limit. Only meeting attendees may attend your webinar.

All webinar requestors received a form to complete with detailed information, including date requests.

The AAS will record your webinar, they will be loaded within 24 hours of the webinar concluding. You can link to this recording.

You will receive a webinar day and time. An email invitation will be sent to you as the Host of the webinar and you will work with the AAS to setup any additional presenters that will be involved. The webinar can be joined by any meeting attendee but no outside (non-registered) participants will be allowed in. Links will be provided on the schedule of events and booth organizers can promote the webinar at their booth or in their social feeds.

The presentation should last no longer than 15 minutes and then you have a 15-minute Q&A session. This is a video and audio open session with the attendees. The presenters will use their own computers to share their screen and present their materials. An AAS technician will be available to assist you.

The webinars are running in a Zoom Meeting environment. All AAS Code of Ethics policies are to be adhered to.