The meeting will be 100% virtual, with all sessions conducted through a web browser or device app, hosted by a company called Pathable.

If you have an accepted abstract for the 2021 meeting or registered for the 2020 Throwback Program, you should have received an email from aapa2021 (at) berkeley.edu with the subject line " AAPA 2021: Abstract presentation information" between February 10-12th notifying you of the date and time of the session in which your presentation is scheduled and the format for your presentation. Please search through your spam folder if you did not receive it. I you still can't find it, email Leslea Hlusko, the Scientific Program Chair.

The following guidelines will be updated as new information becomes relevant. If you have questions in the meantime, please feel free to email Leslea Hlusko, the Scientific Program Chair.

Please read through this detailed google doc for information about how to prepare and upload your presentation.

If you have trouble uploading your presentation, please submit a request for assistance using this Problem Report Form.

**PLEASE NOTE: All contributed sessions are a mix of podium (video) and poster presentations. In the past, when we held our annual meeting in person, we must first sort the presentations based on format and then we categorize by research topic. With the move to the virtual conference and uploaded presentations, the format becomes irrelevant. For this 2021 conference, we were able to create the sessions solely based on the scientific topic. We hope this makes them more focused and productive for you.**

Through the Pathable platform, all contributed talks and posters will be available on-demand from April 5 through the end of April 2021 for registered attendees. Presenters need to upload the files associated with their presentation in advance of the conference between March 12th to March 19th. All of the presentations are checked manually, which is why we need the early upload deadline.

All scientific sessions will be discussion-based live events building on the asynchronous content already uploaded. These will be webinar-like events, where only the presenters have their videos enabled and the audience will ask questions through the chat function. Session chairs are responsible for deciding the structure that their session will follow. We will encourage session chairs to reach out to their participants well in advance of the session so that you know what to expect.

Presenters must upload their presentation files (talks, posters, and any accompanying files) to the Pathable online platform between March 12 and March 19, 23:59 Hawaii Standard Time (HST). You will receive an invitation from the Pathable site to set up your profile and upload your presentation.

If files are not uploaded by this deadline, presenters risk being removed from the final program. After submission, AAPA staff will evaluate the material for completeness. For those presenters who wish to revise or update their files, a second upload window will be provided from March 25-30, 23:59 HST. Keep in mind that in order to use this second window, presenters must have submitted a complete version by March 19. Revised files will not necessarily be checked by staff, so presenters should make sure that their files perform as intended (for example, by keeping the same format as the original submission, and checking the content after upload).

If you were assigned a "podium" presentation, this means that you will create a pre-recorded talk that is 6 to 14 minutes in length. Presenters can compose their talks using any presentation software (e.g., Powerpoint, Keynote). Any aspect ratio can be used, but we recommend using a modern widescreen mode (16:9), because the video viewing window in Pathable is optimized for that size. The file format of the recorded video presentation can be .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .webm, .ogg, and .his. (Note that Zoom’s native output format is .mp4, so if you use Zoom, you can upload the file without a change in format). The maximum video file size is 10 GB, so there is plenty of bandwidth for high-quality files. All videos will need captioning. We will provide instructions on how to do this in our pre-March 1st update.

If you were assigned a "poster" presentation, you will provide two files: 1) the PDF of the poster, and 2) a short (3 min) video or audio walkthrough, similar to a ‘pitch’ that one would give at an in-person poster session.

Supplementary files can also be uploaded to the Pathable site. Presenters may also include additional files that they would like to share (e.g., data files, supplementary scientific video, PDFs of journal papers), uploaded to the tab called Files within each Manage Presentation page. Please note that shared files in the Files tab are downloadable for all meeting participants. However, the main talk video is not downloadable.