Dear VAF Poster Session Participants:

Thanks for your willingness to continue with our poster session!  We are still working through details, but to permit the session to approximate a live one without too much confusion, we’re hoping each of you will be willing to host your own Zoom session on Saturday, May 9, beginning around 12:10pm CDT. 

Since this is a first go-round for everyone, we do not wish to micromanage how those meetings will be held.  You may wish to give a brief, on-camera presentation of your poster to those assembled in your meeting, but that is up to you.  We do hope, however, that you will be “live” and prepared to engage in conversation or answer any questions that participants might have.  You may also wish to use the “share screen” function to share your poster with the participants, though they will also have access to your PDF via the conference website.  We assume that most of you have access to Zoom, but if you do not, you can download a desktop client for free (www.zoom.us). 

Here is our timeline/plan:

1.       As soon as possible, please create a Zoom meeting that begins at 12:00pm CDT for Saturday, May 9 (you might not actually open the meeting until about 12:10pm CDT, but scheduling it for 12:00pm CDT would keep everything consistent).

2.       Once created, Zoom will automatically create a link to your meeting, a Meeting ID, and a Password. 

3.       Please forward the email notice you receive from Zoom with that information to the Poster Session Committee.

4.       Please submit your poster (as a PDF) to the following link on or before Monday, May 4: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zCdCvSiDyxTXalYWf_Veu6f0fD3QQoVy. 

5.       We will then upload your poster PDF to the VAF conference website viewable only to registrants once the conference begins, along with your name and poster title. Next to this, we will include your Zoom link, Meeting ID, and Password. 

6.       We will remind conference attendees that the posters are viewable and encourage them to view the posters ahead of time if they choose to attend the poster session. 

7.       On Saturday, May 9, at 12:00pm CDT, we are planning to open the poster session to all attendees (via a separate Zoom link) with some brief announcements explaining how the session will work (<10 minutes). 

8.       We will then ask each of you to open your Zoom meetings, and encourage poster session attendees to join whichever session they would like. 

9.       For the next 40 minutes, you will host your session.  As noted above, please feel free to do this as you wish (camera on/off, poster visible/not visible), but please be available in case anybody joins and has any questions.  We intend to ensure that at least one VAF board member or other VAF staff will join your meeting to help manage participants and assist with any other troubleshooting.   

10.   After approximately 40 minutes (or about 12:50pm CDT), you should prepare to close your session—eventually by clicking the “End Meeting for All” button. 

11.  By finishing at 12:50, this gives conference attendees the opportunity to take a break before the next set of paper sessions begins at 1:00pm.  (Of course, you should feel free to continue conversing with any folks off-line.)

Please let us know that you are still willing to give this a shot (we hope so!), and/or if you have any questions or concerns.  Please also note that we may need to make adjustments to the above timeline/plan as we gain new information, but we will do our best to stick to it as much as possible. We will also be back in touch with you periodically to confirm details and/or pass along any changes if we learn about them.

Hope you are all staying safe and healthy.

Yours,

Phil, Brent, and Sam