The very first project we started working on was preparing for this convention. I got an email from Dr. Robert Zubrin (President of the Mars Society) before our first meeting saying that he was willing to pay the registration fee for this convention if we were willing to staff a table all three days. We agreed, and began to prepare. It has been a central theme to all of our meetings thus far, and I feel that we did a reasonable job, considering most of us were strangers at first and didn’t have much experience with this sort of thing.

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) is a national organization composed of elementary, middle school, high school, and college-level science teachers. They hold conventions around the country every few months to allow teachers to gain credit towards their continuing education, network with other science teachers, and acquire classroom materials and ideas.

Our mission given by Dr. Zubrin was to represent the Mars Society, get the names, email addresses, and snail mail addresses of interested teachers, and (at our discretion) sell books and other Mars materials to raise funds for our chapter’s activities.

The NSS Seattle chapter (which we share some members with) graciously lent us a huge backdrop with images of a Mars landscape, a "Battlestar Galactica" type-of Mars mission in orbit, and a moonscape with landers and a rover (It’s Phobos!). We also brought two folding tables (because the convention staff did not provide any for free. In fact, nothing at this convention was free, as we later discovered.)

We were unhappy with the way all of our stuff was visible underneath the table, so we decided to rent 2 table skirts from the convention staff. We set up Chris’s VCR and monitor with Dr. Zubrin’s video. I tried to take a couple of chairs from a huge pile of them, but a security guard made me give them back, because they were renting them out. Extremely frustrated, we had Chris run home and get 5 chairs for us to sit on. (Renting a single chair from the convention staff would have cost us $72 - God forbid we get something to sit on for our massive registration costs!)

Another vendor graciously gave us a 3D poster of the Pathfinder landing site, and a couple of pairs of 3D glasses. We highly recommend chapters do to the same at other conventions – we drew in tons of people who just wanted to try on the glasses and look at the landscape. We also opened our National Geographic book to the 3D image in the center to let people try it out.

Almost everybody asked "So when are we going? [to Mars]" It’s clear there’s support for Mars missions among the teachers, and it’s a great asset we can tap into. We gave tons of people the handout on the Mars curriculum and our handouts of the Founding Declaration & our chapter’s Mars Info handout. We signed up over a dozen interested teachers for our email list and told them about our essay contest. One teacher suggested that we contact the Washington Educational Service Districts to promote our contest in their individual newsletters – we’re guaranteed to hit every single teacher in Washington.

Sales of books were slow. We did sell some "Mars or Bust" buttons, but we were generally disappointed at our overall sales. We are hopeful that teachers will be in more of a mood to buy our books later in the convention, when they don’t have to carry them around.

I got a whole bunch of nice black plastic 3D glasses from the folks at Rainbow Symphony just for talking to them about the Society’s goals. We also were invited to the Washington Science Teachers convention, which will be held next October in Spokane. We were also invited to the Pacific Northwest Math Conference, which will be next October in Portland, OR.

Randy was finally able to talk to Bill Nye "The Science Guy" about becoming a Mars Society advisor. When asked if he knew who Dr. Zubrin was, he said "Oh, yeah, Mr. Manifest Destiny". Apparently he was put out by comments made during the Founding Convention (although they weren’t made then by Dr. Zubrin) He was not interested in being an advisor. However, he was interested in speaking at a future Mars Society function. Since he tapes his show here in Seattle, and we have a member who has a mutual friend of Mr. Nye, we can serve as the contact if anybody else wants to get him a message.

We were invited to the Washington Science Teachers convention, which will be held next October in Spokane. We were also invited to next year’s western region NSTA conference, to be held in Reno, NV (but we will leave other chapters to manage that one.)

Don Scott stopped by the booth to say hello. He is a NASA educational program manager and spoke at the Mars Society Founding Convention. He told his NASA colleague in front of us how supportive NASA is about the Mars Society. "These guys are important," he said, "because they can get us to Mars. We can’t tell people we want to go to Mars, but they can!"

Karin Plagens of Enumclaw, WA won our raffle of the National Geographic book autographed by Matt Golombek. Unfortunately, she did not provide us with an email address or telephone number, so we will have to ship it to her "by surprise".

We wrapped up the convention at 12 noon. We gathered all of our materials, broke down our displays and tables, and started loading everything into our vehicles. We decided that it would be best to go and talk about the convention -- how it went, what we did right, and what we could have done better. We also wanted to make a list of advice we could give to other chapters holding similar conventions. So, the four of us went out to lunch...

Be generally familiar with Mars, Mars Pathfinder, Mars Direct, and the current NASA plans. People will ask you questions about all of these! Have answers ready. Grill each other!

• Find out the layout of the convention center ahead of time, so you know where to direct people & where everything is.
• Register early! You can get good booth space
• Try to get a booth close to NASA & other space organizations
• Gather all your materials ahead of time, so nothing has to be done last minute & determine ahead of time who is responsible for what
• Get support from HQ – brochures, work with the Educational Task Force, etc.
• The Mars Direct video is not a big crowd draw – try to get Mars footage from the Discovery channel or NASA Select (having a/v in general is important)
• Conventions are expensive! Find out what the convention staff will give you and bring everything else you will need (tables, tablecloths, chairs, carpet & padding, pens, pencils, stapler, paper clips, tape)
• Find out if you will have a banner for your booth, and maybe have a nice one made (most exhibitors have their own)
• Have a staffing plan – make sure you have at least 2 people in the booth at all times. Call everybody the night before to make sure they’ll be there.
• Make sure everybody has a ride to the convention center, and has somewhere to park. If you have a lot of stuff to bring (tables, backdrops, etc), somebody should have a van to do the transporting. Find out where they can go to unload.
• Wear nice, tasteful clothing. Wear what other exhibitors & attendees are wearing. Avoid black – it scares people
• Wear comfortable shoes

• Lots of brochures, Mars info, info on the Mars Society, educational material, etc.
• Mars Books: Case for Mars, Managing Martians, National Geographic’s book
• Mars Direct Video
• Mars Pathfinder Hot Wheels Action Pack
• "Mars or Bust" buttons
• Space models – Mars Pathfinder, Sojourner, Mars Global Surveyor cutout
• Simulant Mars rocks
• Business cards with your chapter contacts & marssociety.org web address

• Raffle off something – you’ll get a lot more names and emails. Put big "Win this!" signs so people know you’re actually having a raffle (people never read small signs)
• Have a 3D Mars Pathfinder panorama with a couple of pairs of 3D glasses (Rainbow Symphony is a good source for this)
• Have a good background for your booth – the Mars charts work well or use generic space backgrounds
• Give out free stuff! Teachers are expecting that at these conventions. Have plastic bags available if they buy a lot of stuff from you. (Perhaps we can get some "Mars Society" convention bags made?) Free food is good too!
• Give little trinkets such as "Mars or Bust" buttons with book purchase

• Expect low book sales – teachers don’t have a lot of money – focus on getting the word out
• Give out business cards, web addresses
• Be polite, make eye contact, stand up when you are talking to somebody
• Make jokes, be interesting, ask people questions about themselves
• Don’t overcrowd the booth. If you have extra staff, send them around to talk to others & direct people to the booth.
• Make sure people put their correct email addresses on forms
• Put a couple of dummy entries on any forms you’re having people fill out. People are afraid of blank forms.
• Do what other exhibitors are doing right – talk to other exhibitors to find out how they’re doing.
• Make contacts with NASA, other booths, and other conventions.

Summary

Overall, we were happy with the way things went. We raised some money (although not as much as we had hoped), we met a whole bunch of teachers who were interested in Mars, and we got the word out about the Mars Society.

However, there were things we could have done differently (and better), and we hope that our experience will help other chapters, and ultimately further the goals of the Mars Society. As one of our members frequently says, "If men are from Mars, then I wanna go home!".