Day 2 in Little Rock, Ark.

The FGS Conference started in earnest this morning with "Delegates 101." It appears that SGS has been missing most, if not all, of the benefits of membership in the Federation of Genealogical Societies. They sponsor a number of free programs to support member societies, including bylaws review, advertising for seminars, and conference/seminar planning guides.

The second session I attended was a presentation on cemeteries by Elissa Scalise Powell, our invited speaker for the SGS Spring Seminar 2010. I'm happy to report that Elissa is quite entertaining and has a wealth of information--and some great slides. Everyone will learn something from her, I'm sure.

The other 4 sessions I attended today were: "Program, Program, Git Your Program", "How to Control the Debate Dialogue in a Meeting", "Conducting Your Society Business in a Virtual World", and "Using Your Society's Webs Site (to attract new members)." All were uniformly informative and I've got 6 pages of handwritten notes to prove it! I'll be happy to share my notes and the syllabuses (syllabi?) for these talks to anyone who's interested.

I also attended the FGS Delegates Luncheon and an evening presentation by Ancestry.com. During the "sharing" period at the luncheon I mentioned our completed King County Records Project. The round of applause and shocked expression of the moderator when I stated the number of records indexed [over 1,560,000] were quite gratifying. More kudos to Marilynn Van Hise and her team.
The next three days offer numerous research topics, so I expect to come home well educated.
Ginny