Workshop Registration and Pre-workshop Learner Assessments

For a few days now i have been wanting to comment on these two issues, workshop registration and pre-workshop learner assessment. These are two tasks that are occuring somewhere on th continent as we speak. Local societies hosting events know just how hard smooth registrations are to attain. And speakers and teachers desperately need to learn more about how to get the pre-assessment info early enough to make meaningful adjustments to course/worshop content. There is help on the web for both of these tasks. Let’s look at these.

Podcast from a Major Archives: An Interesting Educational Idea

A recent media release from The National Archives (UK) makes me wonder if other archives or libraries are exploring the idea of educating their clients using podcasts. It seems efficient: A lecture by a subject specialist is recorded and made accessible through the website WHEN THE CLIENT NEEDS IT. I expect that major genealogy collections will include podcast lectures teaching clients what is in the collection and how to access and use it. Interested in this example? Read on.

Keeping Track of Your Research: Program Ideas

As a genealogy librarian for over 20+ years, I faced almost daily the chaos of unprepared genealogists who neither knew what the wanted nor what they had! Many had no idea where they learned what they had! Out of this experience came a number of library sponsored programs on a variety of interconnected topcs. Let me tell you about some of these.

Program Planner’s Blues: Blue Sky Thinking

In every genealogical society, genealogical library, local history society etc., there is some person upon whom the executive has dumped the responsibility to plan future programs, find speakers, arrange events. Often its the same person who complained last year about the third appearance of Joyce the scrap book lady.

Genealogy-Event-Driven Marketing

I read something recently on SpeakerNetNews.com that suggested that events create a controlled-marketing environment that drives sales. I find this very interesting. And it got me thinking about a conversation I had one evening at a regional genealogy conference with Ryan Taylor and Dave Obee, both  authors and lecturers.

TeleClasses for Busy Genealogy Entrepreneurs

I receive a weekly newsletter from Seminar Announcer, a free service that promotes seminars all over the continent. There are an amazing number of free and reasonably priced programs available that are aimed at business and marketing that would be useful to anyone hoping to get ahead on the business side of professional genealogy. I was particularly interested in the TeleClasses or Audio Conferences as they are sometimes called. I suspect they are a practical solution, though imperfect, to convey information to others and could be a model for the delivery of several aspects of genealogy education. Here are some upcoming events listed:

Web Sites for Genealogy Educators

My son The Hermit Poet has just launched a new venture you might be interested in. Check out http://www.lone-crow.com/Design/. Think about a custom designed web page for your business designed by a creative young genealogist.