ROOTS & BRANCHES

Back in the “old days”—you know, that time pre-COVID that was 5 years ago but seems like a generation!—a multiday conference with many simultaneous tracks of lectures meant making many on-the-spot choices for which presentations to attend and which to skip.

There often were audio-only recordings of the presentations, but that didn’t include the fair portion of learning that was visual from the lecturer’s PowerPoint slides.

As the genealogy programming world has evolved with so much programming in the form of online recorded webinars, some of the pick-and-choose difficulties went away, but so did some of the incentive of attending an event in person.

National Genealogical Society’s upcoming Family History Conference, dubbed “Tales & Trails,” might be the perfect mix of an in-person, multi-track event since it offers video recordings of every presentation, available for viewing by registrants for nearly two months after the event.

“Tales & Trails” will be held in Louisville, Kentucky, from May 23–26 at the Galt House Hotel.

 Friday, May 23, will kick off conference activities with pre-conference tours (including repositories and Old Louisville), workshops, and genealogy organization events and the grand finale of the day will be an expo hall opening reception to officially begin the main conference.

Saturday and Sunday (May 24 and 25) will include more than 50 lectures from leading experts in the genealogy field, covering a variety of intriguing topics that include:

• “Ways of Life: Tracing Ancestral Pathways, Power, and Production through the Control of Water”—Learn about the role water played as an important commodity and how it supported occupations, immigration/migration, and the role of government.
• “Beyond Names and Dates: Integrating Social History into your Research”—This panel explores the importance of social history in family research, highlighting how understanding the “where” enriches the “what” and “why” of ancestors’ lives.
• “Guiding Principles for the Genealogical Use of Artificial Intelligence”—This panel presents the guiding principles to uphold when using artificial intelligence congruent with existing genealogical standards and ethical practices.
• “DNA: Understanding and Exploring DNA-Based Unlinked Family Clusters”—Explore unlinked family clusters in genetic genealogy, and learn to identify, analyze, and connect DNA matches lacking common ancestors.
• “A Day in the Life: Creating a Compelling and Documented Family Short Story”— Be inspired and empowered to memorialize the stories that deserve to be preserved.

On the conference’s final day (Monday, May 26), there will be  as special event at Louisville’s historic Cave Hill Cemetery. Within this beautiful 296-acre Victorian-era cemetery and arboretum lies Cave Hill National Cemetery, where more than 5,000 soldiers are interred.  

But back to that “too many lectures to see in one weekend” thing. Registered attendees can watch any of the presentations through July 15 at your leisure.

Sounds like a winning formula for a long weekend and then stay-at-home learning!

 Reading can register for the conference at the URL, https://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/