News From the 2013 FGS Conference

The time has finally arrived! This week I am attending the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) Conference in Fort Wayne. Fort Wayne’s Grand Wayne Center is a great facility for this conference. It is roomy and convenient, with the session rooms and the exhibit hall close to each other. Plus, it is right across the street from the Allen County Public Library. I am driving to and from the conference each day, which reminds me of when I attended IPFW and commuted to classes each day from Chatt.

Registration at the Grand Wayne Center, 2013 FGS.

Registration at the Grand Wayne Center, 2013 FGS. (2013 photo by Karen)

Wednesday’s sessions focused on ideas and issues for genealogy societies. One project I learned about was “Community Trees.” Presenter David Barss described the project as “a locality-based, lineage-linked, sourced, genealogy database” that “attempts to identify the genealogy of everyone in a community.” This would be an interesting project for Karen’s Chatt, using the church records of Zion Chatt and/or Zion Schumm. The project would consist of creating family pedigrees from the church records and a few other sources. Interesting, but would be quite an undertaking. We’ll see…

FGS 2013 Ambassador Badge

Of course I walked over to the Allen County Public Library to browse through some books on Wednesday. I was not surprised that it was very crowded over there.

Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana. (2013 photo by Karen)

Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana. (2013 photo by Karen)

Today (Thursday) was the actual beginning of the conference. The Keynote Session was about the history of Rock & Roll and presenter Richard Aquila explained how the music of that era reflected social issues of that time. Hearing those old songs brought back many memories.

After that I attended three excellent research methodology sessions by Tom Jones, Elizabeth Shown Mills and Patricia Moseley Van Skaik. Pat’s talk focused on a woman and her family who lived in an area of Cincinnati that was photographed in the Cincinnati Panoramic daguerreotype of 1848. In the fourth session I learned a little about interpreting DNA test results, but I still have questions and I am going to try to talk with someone at the FamilyTree DNA table tomorrow.

2013 FGS Conference Exhibit Hall.

2013 FGS Conference Exhibit Hall.

Some news from the conference: FGS will hold its 2015 conference with the RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City on 12-14 February 2015. They will have separate sessions and some shared events. That should be one great conference! FGS announced that they will hold a small conference in late summer of 2015.

In other news, Bruce Buzbee, of Roots Magic, said that a Roots Magic android app should be available in a couple months. It will be available for free from the Google Play Store. There is already a Roots Magic app for the iPhone.

And last but not least, PBS will begin a new series, Genealogy Roadshow with Josh Taylor and Kenyatta D. Berry. The show will air on 23 September and looks to be very interesting. We got to view a 5 minute segment from the show this morning.

2013 Conference Ambassador Bloggers Karen & Candy with their DeBrand candy bars.

2013 Conference Ambassador boggers Karen & Candy with their DeBrand candy bars.

The 2013 FGS Conference Ambassadors met today for a group photo and for a prize drawing. I won one of the gift bags. The bright green Allen County Public Library bag was filled with a variety of Fort Wayne goodies: a coffee mug, pens and pencils, a note pad and little notebooks, 2 key chains, a soft ACPL stress ball, and 2 delicious DeBrand chocolate bars. DeBrand chocolate is made right in Fort Wayne and is wonderful chocolate. I would like to take their factory tour some day.

Saturday will be the last day of the conference. A big THANK YOU to the conference planners, volunteers, speakers, exhibitors and everyone else who made this conference a success.

 

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