RootsWeb
at NGS 2000

Providence, RI, May 31-June 3 2000

Donna's Photographs

What does the RootsWeb Conference Coordinator do in preparation for a conference, at the conference and after the conference?  I'll bet you think the coordinator has a nice vacation.  Hardly.  Since some other staff members do attend the conference or come as volunteers to help, though, you know (or at least hope) you will have help and good company at the conference.  And that is the great part of it.  We get to meet face to face with people with whom we work when we telecommute every day.  We also get to meet RootsWeb's users and subscribers.

So what DOES the coordinator do?

As soon as the conference is announced, you apply for booth space.  You try to get the organization to use the RootsWeb address rather than your own private address.  Results here are mixed.  Maybe next year they'll get that right.

You reserve rooms at the conference hotel immediately, or you may all be rooming far away from the conference site, (or that's the fear).  You reserve enough rooms for staff who show an interest in coming.  You get your own transportation arranged.  You then change these reservations as people tell you they have changed their plans.

You rewrite old flyers and add new ones for the resources added to RootsWeb since the last conference.  You get attractive copies made.  You get give-away items (pens, stickers, buttons etc.).  You make sure you have the things you will need, and pack everything and send it to the conference hotel enough in advance that you are sure it will be there.  When you get there, you deal with it if the hotel can't find all the boxes or if the rooms are not as expected.

You remind staff who will be there about their rooms and that when they get there they should put them on their own credit cards and get them off of yours.  If they change their minds at the last minute your stress level goes up a little.

You arrive, get the boxes delivered to your room, and with help from the others, you take everything to the exhibit hall and set up the evening before the conference starts.  You deal with last minute changes or lost boxes.

You get to meet - and get help from - other staffers who come to help and to kibitz.  And you get to photograph them for posterity and your photo album.  Everyone wants to meet and talk when we have free time, so we eat together and laugh together and stand around and kibitz when one of us turns on the notebook computer and gets on IRC to tell the others who didn't come what is happening.

You get ideas for the next conference.  You see what others are doing.

When it's all over, you pack the boxes, send them home for the next conference, have a relaxing evening with the others who have been there, and finally you go home.  If you are lucky, you get a day to relax when you get there.  You probably have a whole lot of email and work piled up, though, even though you had a computer with you and did log on and take care of business in the early or late hours of each day.

And so we are sharing our photographs with other staff and with other interested people.
 

RootsWeb at NGS 2000
Photos, Donna Popelish
MJO 6/14/2000