ROOTS & BRANCHES

Life in the Pandemic world of 2020 and 2021 has caused many dislocations along with opportunities.

Something on the opportunity side of the ledger is July’s virtual conference of the International German Genealogy Partnership, the early bird discount deadline of which will be Wednesday.

Already hundreds have registered for this event, which I am co-chairing (yes, get my conflict of interest statement out of the way—right away!).

Working with a committee from around the world, we’ve tried to craft an event that’s as close to “being together” as is possible in the virtual world.

We’ll have live question-and-answer periods after our marque presenters’ talks on July 17 and 24.

Those same world-class lecturers and well as more than 50 talks from other German-genealogy experts will be subtitled (many of the presenters will speak in English but some will be in German).

There’ll be  a virtual exhibit hall available, headlined by the conference’s Gold sponsor MyHeritage along with other sponsors and vendors.

There will be Zoom breakouts called “Connections” sessions (a nod to the successful micro-gatherings held at the Partnership’s previous biennial conferences in Minneapolis and Sacramento) and even a couple of “virtual happy hour” mixers on the days in between the marquee talks.

The theme of the conference, “Researching Together Worldwide / Weltweit Gemeinsam Forschen,” really says it all.

The marquee roster includes Roger Minert, Diahan Southard, Michael Strauss, Katherine Schober, Timo Kracke, Ute Brandenburg, Wolfgang Grams, and Judy Russell.

During the week in between, more than 50 prerecorded On-Demand sessions will be available for viewing online. This lineup includes Roland Paul, Irmtraud Tiemann, and Dirk Weissleder from Germany; Benjamin Hollister from Australia; Andre Hammann from Brazil; and Gail Blankenau, Fritz Juengling, and Michael Lacopo from the U.S.

The full listing of speakers can be found at https://www.iggp2021.org/speakers.

No matter a genealogist’s skill level, they’ll be able to find presentations or people who may be able to help them with all aspects of German genealogy.

Packages offering just the marquee speakers or the On-Demand sessions are available but the best value is the “Combo” package offering all the presentations plus access to the exhibit hall, Connections sessions and bonus “demo presentations” from sponsors and exhibitors.

The top-of-the-line package, called the “USB Works” package includes all of the Combo items plus a preloaded USB flash drive with all the conference sessions for an early bird price of just $249.

Registration can be completed at the following link: https://playbacknow.regfox.com/iggp2021.

To stay up-to-date on conference news, be sure to sign-up for the IGGP conference newsletter here https://bit.ly/IGGPnewsletter.