FGS2014 - Society Day

I can't believe it has been a month since I last posted but life has been busy and I guess I've been a little busy.  Both life and genealogy have gotten in the way of blogging.

The Federation of Genealogy Societies Convention in San Antonio began yesterday with Library Day.  I did not attend but I have only heard positive responses to the presentations.

Today was Society Day and I missed the morning sessions arriving at lunch time.  Over lunch in the Bridge area, I caught up with Thomas MacEntee and Smallest Leaf.  There was a small concession stand with a variety of sandwiches, drinks, and snacks.  The bridge divides the two sides of the Henry B Gonzales Convention Center divides the two side of the Center with each side having 3 floors of meeting rooms.  With windows on each side and overhead skylights the area is open and bright.  Today it didn't seem very crowded but it was Society Day and there was a Focus on Societies luncheon and the luncheon also included the FGS Annual Business Meeting and Society Shout-Out.

After lunch it was time to choose the first of three afternoon sessions that were available.  The sessions followed six tracks:  Strategic Planning, Society Technology, Outreach and Education, Strategies for Success, Society Projects, and Advocacy and Legal Issues.

I chose the Society Projects "Creating a Community Indexing Projects" presented by Thomas MacEntee.  Thomas described the types of projects that would be suitable as well as scanning methods, using Excel and Google Drive for capturing data and how to share the completed project.

For the next session I attended the Society Technology presentation by Linda Woodward Geiger "Calling All Society Webmasters: Past, Present, and Future.  This was a very interactive session with lots of questions and responses.  Members of the audience all had different levels of experience.  We discussed the advantage of having a technical person and several editors or content providers.Another topic discussed was service providers and why own a domain name.

For the final session, I selected the Outreach & Education track and "Ten Tips for Marketing Your Society" with Marian Pierre-Smith.  One tip Marian pointed out that any marketing approach should reflect the mission of the Society.  The types of mission might be to reach members, to recruit members, and to become mote visible to the community.  Another suggestion was to consider working with another group in a combined workshop or seminar.

All three of the sessions were very well done and provied tons of inspiration to take back to our group.

I had dinner with five lovely women from  Texas and learned a lot about the DTR (Daughters of the Texas Republic).

Now it's time to select tomorrow's sessions and charge the electronics.