Tomorrow, the National Genealogical Society’s annual conference begins. It’s being held in St. Charles, Missouri, about 30 minutes from my home, so I am not staying at the conference hotel. Since no travel is required, I’ve barely given the conference much advance thought.
But today’s the day for me to focus on it and I’m getting really excited! I love attending conferences (I go to both genealogy and organizing conferences regularly) and I know that some pre-planning can be really beneficial. So today, I’m going to do the following:
- Pick up the conference registration materials
- Go through the syllabus and select the classes I’ll plan to attend
- Familiarize myself with the conference app, which I downloaded a month or two ago
- Mark the classes I select in the conference app
- Go through the list of exhibitors and note the ones I want to make sure I see
- Write down my goals for the conference
- Think about the people I want to try to meet
- Reach out to the blog readers who have told me they’ll be at the conference
Taking a few moments to think about and write down my goals for the conference is time well spent. Keeping my goals top of mind will inform my decisions about how to spend my conference time. In my case, I have goals for both my genealogy research and for this blog.
This is my first NGS conference and I’m really excited it’s finally here. I look forward to digging in to the conference materials this afternoon. I know I have four days of great learning and great interactions ahead of me.
If you’re attending the conference, please make sure you say hi!
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