Guest post – Pauleen Cass – perspectives on Congress 2015
Congress 2015 has just come to a close after four days of concentrated learning and socialising. What a great job the convenor, Kerrie Gray, and her Congress team of “green people” did to bring us such a diverse and interesting set of topics and speakers. The idea of the Purple Patch people was an inspired one as they helped us find our way, sold us raffle tickets and were generally helpful, day in and day out.
As part of the finale, we were given an advance welcome to the Congress 2018 in Sydney. Bernhardt gave us an adventurous Germanic introduction to their “Bridging the Past and the Future” theme.
I certainly had a great time and learnt a heap which will take days to digest, if not weeks. It occurred to me the readers of this blog might find it interesting to hear from some of the attendees in Canberra and what their “take home” messages were.
Gail: “the breadth of the presenters and topics were fascinating and encouraging.”
Beth: “networking was great and it was exciting to get to know people were interested – six degrees of separation”.
Judy: “visiting the city and meeting relations from the extended family tree and friends who hadn’t seen for years, learning a lot about varied topics….and not liking cold weather”.
Carmel: “leaving with an overloaded brain but lots of avenues to explore, books to read, new friends made, and meeting internet friends; chance to see international speakers”.
Stephanie: “learning more about Trove and Family Search; very high standard of speakers. A huge advantage of simple, clear talks…or good handouts for more complex one. Sometimes difficult to choose topic”.
Kylie: “Learn how to access unusual resources, meet people from the same area – networking”.
Jackie: “Well run and lots of choice in topics. Favourite thing – networking and putting faces to online friends”.
Sharn: Impressed by the level of enthusiasm and passion for family history and thorough research that the community of genealogists who attend these conferences share. There is no end to what you can learn and learning in a shared environment is invigorating.”
I can echo all these sentiments as I had a great time socially meeting “old” and new friends but also learning so much from the expertise of a diverse range of speakers. If only we could clone ourselves and attend more than one session.
Why not plan to attend Congress 2018 in Sydney? Even better from a “Queenslander” perspective, is that Congress 2021 will be co-hosted by the Genealogical Society of Queensland and Queensland Family History Society. Now won’t that be fun for all of us?!
Pauleen Cass, Darwin
Pauleen Cass, Darwin
Blogging at:
Family History across the seas: http://cassmob.wordpress.com/
East Clare Emigrants: http://eastclareoz.wordpress.com/
From Dorfprozelten to Australia: http://dorfprozeltenaus.wordpress.com/
Tropical Territory: http://troppont.wordpress.com/
I’m a proud member of Kiva Genealogists for Families: http://www.kiva.org/team/genealogists
Great news about 2021!
Hear, hear. Hope to see you all in Sydney in 2018.
It's going to be very exciting in 2018 and 2021…can you even believe we are saying those years..seemed so far away once.