Introduction

What makes a fair? The Astronomie- und Trödeltreff - so it was called until the 36th (!) repetition - was a fair for star friends (please forgive me if I do not use the female or also various spellings for simplicity in the following text - this has nothing to do with disrespect, but simply with my laziness to write). At this show, one met, listened to a few but exciting presentations, and could -- and that was the focus, wander the exhibit halls and look at the offerings of vendors large and small, touch, discuss with others and the vendors -- and meet each other.

In 2019, the ATT in its classic form had to be cancelled due to Corona; I won't report on that frustrating decision here. Rather, I'm interested in showing how a differently conceived ATT could succeed and how we recovered a lot of ATT spirit despite Corona. In this article I will go into the technical aspects of the solution with the thought of offering some useful background information for a similar event to those who are interested. Elsewhere (planned is the VdS Journal and the Sternzeit magazine) we will report on the ATT 2021 digital in the general form.

The basic setup

ATT 2021 was to be a digital event; an event to see, meet, inform, and share.

Budget and staffing constraints, available technologies, accessibility, user acceptance and existing habituation played a clear role in the selection of elements used. Many nice ideas (Hopin.to or 3d-fair-appearances were out of question already because of financial considerations.

The internet presence

A central point of contact had to be designed, where potential participants could get information early on and navigate through the program on the day of the fair.

With our Internet provider of the site www.sternwarte-essen.de we had the possibility to link the separate domain www.att-essen.de to another, parallel site, www.att-digital.de. Unfortunately, due to the provider-specific certificate management, an additional certificate had to be purchased, but the site was worth it to us (and the site is rated Grade A, i.e. the best grade, by www.ssl-labs.com). Then I gave the at-essen.de a direct redirect to att-digital.de; the att-essen.de site needed some updating.

How should our offer and the participants come together now? The Internet appearance was meant quasi as a program magazine, because we had 4 very good and very different specialized lectures, a live discussion, different greetings and already the idea on a larger number of YouTube videos fast together.

(to be continued)