[Susannah Cleveland]

How might we create spaces that substitute for or improve upon the traditional face-to-face experience with exhibitors?

[Treshani Perera]

Depending on platform used for virtual meeting, breakout rooms might be a good venue for interactions with vendors. Ideally, conference attendees would have the choice to pick which vendors they want to interact with, but this could be a random assignment as well.

I also think that short vendor presentations (pre-recorded videos) could be made available before the conference, so that attendees can make individual appointments during/after the conference.

[James L. Zychowicz]

In addition to breakout rooms or other virtual space that could be part of MLA’s meeting platform, services also exist that create virtual exhibit halls. The latter firms resemble in some ways the convention services firms that MLA knows from the ways it shapes physical meeting spaces. It may be useful to explore the virtual exhibit hall services to arrive at a checklist of elements to offer exhibitors.  At the same time, it may be useful for MLA members to indicate to the task force the kinds of information and interactions they want to have, to see if those can be addressed.

[Nara Newcomer]

The ability to make appointments and to try out electronic resources (maybe short trial period logins, like some vendors already distributed in the past) are important. Also useful would be time window (s) with an open room (like Zoom, but whatever platform) where I could drop in for discussion with vendors but also having colleagues in the room – to hear from my colleagues their questions and how they are using the products.

[Karen Berry McCool]

I attended NASIG a few months ago, and their approach was to let vendors present in a lightning round session.  I appreciated this approach, as I personally don’t really have the institutional means to have worthwhile one-on-one engagement with vendors,  but still benefit a lot from being able to see what the latest products and trends are.  I think that this could be a great opportunity in addition to what everyone else has suggested above.

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