Back in October, I posted about my desire to see more genealogy societies and organizations leveraging webconference technology. For those of us that may be interested in attending but aren’t able to physically make it, I wondered if there would be a push from any group to do this kind of e-conference activity. I come back to this topic b/c I want to share an example of how my professional organization is handling this approach.
I am a medical librarian/information specialist by profession, and our professional group is the Medical Library Association. New to the annual meeting this year in DC is the e-conference; the ability to register to “attend” the conference virtually and get online access to several elements of the conference – audio of sessions with electronic content, streaming video of keynote & plenary sessions, posters & various 5-minute presentations. The e-conference fee for association members is only $100 (compared to $460 for physical registration).
There is also an interactive online portal planned to accompany the e-conference. This e-conference concept is brand new to our association this year. Last year, online access to posters was experimented with and that must have gone well. I am glad to see the organizers try to provide access for those that can’t attend. The other major component of the meeting, the paper presentation sessions, are not included in the e-conference this year, but maybe they will expand to include that next year if the experiment goes well. I am looking forward to seeing MLA’s after-meeting assessment of how well this approach works.
Wouldn’t an approach like this be wonderful for genealogy conferences?
I’d be interested in this. I’m on the PR committee of our local gen society.
Hi Taneya, thanks for the link. We are eager to see how the e-conference concept pans out as well.
Nice blog! If you are attending MLA 10, please consider applying to be an official blogger. Thanks! Molly