Now underway, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Society’s 2022 Virtual International Conference has an innovative approach, AFAIK.
The five-day conference offers 60 live-streaming presentations, 100 pre-recorded presentations and 40 group meetings. That’s quite a menu!
Having parallel conference sessions is expected, so you can’t consume everything on the menu.
IAJGS attendees can select from three participation and pricing levels — the à la carte approach.
Explorer Level, any combination of up to 20 live-streaming presentations, pre-recorded sessions, and meetings from 21-25 August.
Enthusiast Level offers any combination of up to 50 live-streaming presentations, pre-recorded sessions, and meetings from 21-25 August.
Experienced Level (full access) offers access to ALL live-streaming presentations, pre-recorded presentations, and meetings from 21-25 August.
Each level includes access to each session you paid for and access to the Expo Hall and the Resource Library until 25 October.
This flexibility would be a challenge to police in an in-person conference, not so much online, another advantage of the virtual conference world.
I would love to even be able to pick just a couple of sessions. The big Ontario conference this summer had a session I really wanted (Tara Shymanski’s Slow Genealogy), but I had neither the time nor the money to spend on the whole conference. If I could have just paid to view that session, I would have been so happy. Or at least paid for a few and viewed what I could.
I keep hoping the folks over at Legacy Family Tree Webinars will pick up Tara’s session at some point. I do subscribe there, though even so, don’t have the time to get my money’s worth from it.
I like this idea. Many times I have looked at conferences and only a few talks have sparked my interest or applied to my areas of research. Financially, it wasn’t feasible to buy in for the full conference but I would have definitely bought a smaller package had it been available.
Plus not everyone can afford the full registration fee but maybe would partake on a smaller level. There are so many things in the genealogy world that compete for our hard-earned money.