{"id":607,"date":"2011-08-01T23:07:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T04:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/reasons-for-attending-genealogy-conferences\/"},"modified":"2013-07-06T19:45:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-07T00:45:02","slug":"reasons-for-attending-genealogy-conferences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/reasons-for-attending-genealogy-conferences\/","title":{"rendered":"Reasons for Attending Genealogy Conferences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Saturday, James Tanner, author of <a href=\"http:\/\/genealogysstar.blogspot.com\/\">Genealogy\u2019s Star<\/a> blog, posted the article <a href=\"http:\/\/genealogysstar.blogspot.com\/2011\/07\/on-attending-genealogical-conferences.html\">On Attending Genealogy Conferences<\/a>.\u00a0 Reading his post got me thinking about why it\u2019s important to me to attend conferences and why I\u2019m excited about attending my first <em>national<\/em> genealogy conference in September.\u00a0 While I\u2019m gearing up for a big, multi-day conference, my reasons are the same for smaller conferences, in addition to workshops, seminars, and the like.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Learning Opportunity<\/strong> \u2013 Conferences provide many opportunities to learn about available records, methodology, technology, and other topics of interest to genealogists.\u00a0 Sometimes these things are new to us and sometimes they are a refresher.\u00a0 Either way, conferences allow us the opportunity to enhance our current skills, learn how to conduct effective and efficient research, and stay current on new developments or trends.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Networking<\/strong> \u2013 While I am a big proponent of using Facebook for networking, especially in the genealogy world, I still feel that face-to-face contact is still a wonderful thing.\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing what you learn just by having a casual conversation with the person sitting next to you before a lecture or during a meal.\u00a0 There is something special about the face-to-face contact we have at conferences as opposed to our virtual world behind Facebook walls.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Motivation<\/strong> \u2013 Attending conferences and learning something new is a great way to get motivated.\u00a0 For some of us, there is always something that hinders our research, be it time, other obligations, money, record access, or simply being overwhelmed by a vast database with brick walls all over the place.\u00a0 When you learn about a new record type or problem-solving method, you feel invigorated and will usually find a way to fit research back into your life.\u00a0 It\u2019s exciting when you learn about something that might just help you break down a barrier and answer questions you\u2019ve had for years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sharing<\/strong> \u2013 Everyone has a story to tell, and your story may be just the thing to kick-start someone else\u2019s challenging research.\u00a0 My ears particularly perk up when I hear people discussing adoption and War of 1812.\u00a0 And of course I have my own knowledge to share on the topic of certain locations and records.\u00a0 Learn from others and share what you know!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Having Fun<\/strong> \u2013 Let\u2019s face it, genealogists are a fun group of people when we get together and kick back outside of a library, courthouse, or archive.\u00a0 Although I welcome any sort of learning opportunity, this is the part I look forward to the most; hanging out with fellow genealogists and having a good time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Saturday, James Tanner, author of Genealogy\u2019s Star blog, posted the article On Attending Genealogy Conferences.\u00a0 Reading his post got me thinking about why it\u2019s important to me to attend conferences and why I\u2019m excited about attending my first national genealogy conference in September.\u00a0 While [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,301,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","category-education-genblog","category-genblog","cat-27-id","cat-301-id","cat-25-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-9N","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3393,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions\/3393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}