With COVID creating problems throughout the country and world many organizations have not been having meetings, conferences, or institutes. Others have been holding them in the visual realm. They have scrambled to re-organize and are using Zoom, Go To Meeting, and other virtual means to hold their meetings. Many conferences have gone virtual in the past year. Almost all institutes where you go for a week-long course in a particular subject have been held virtually since COVID broke out. Many people in the genealogy world are saying this is the wave of the future. But is it? And Should it be?
I am hoping it is not. I don’t want to stop going to in-person events. There is a feeling I get when attending these various events. I can almost feel the energy flowing into me, especially at conferences and institutes. It re-energizes me and gets me wanting to do even more genealogy. I don’t feel that energy when I attend a virtual event. In fact, I feel almost as though I”m hiding in a closet with my computer and a flashlight. It is like a futuristic book I once read of a world where people were living in storage units and afraid to come out and interact with others.
True, there are a lot of advantages to virtual environments. It is safer from an illness vantage point. It is easier to get to, with less travel and expense; you can squeeze it in easier around other commitments, and it has fewer hurdles for people with handicaps or older people that just don’t get around as well anymore. On the other hand, you lose the easy ability to mingle and talk with like-minded people and you don’t get a chance to explore a new area. The last two are some of my favorite parts of conferences.
From the point of view of people putting these together, virtual creates the hurdle of learning new technology as well as potential problems with pulling it off. Power outages and low wi/fi signals are a couple serious problems that quickly come to mind. Other people in the household interrupting or doing silly things in the background of users' screens are others. I’m sure there are a number of other behind-the-scenes stuff that I don’t immediately see. To the positive, I’m sure a totally virtual conference could be pulled off with fewer volunteer hours and eliminating the need to rent a large space with plenty of hotel rooms nearby to hold it. Perhaps it could even prove to be more profitable doing it virtually?
What is the answer? What should the genealogy community do going forward? Nobody really knows at this point, although many have ideas. Which one or would a combination be the solution? We all will have to wait to find out.
Overall, I think there are pluses and minuses to both of them. Different people have different preferences, and it also depends on circumstances in their lives. In an ideal situation, we could have hybrid conferences and institutes going forward. Those who wish and can attend in person get to do just that. Others can tune in via Zoom or whatever technology is used and participate that way. While I’ll always prefer to attend in person, I’m sure there will be many times when I and others will be grateful for the virtual options as well. Let’s shoot for as many conferences and institutes as possible being hybrid going forward! It will take more work, at least initially, on the ones creating these events. However, I think after the experiences of the past year, that even the extra work will be worth it. Also, soon people would become so used to this way of putting on an event, that it would become second nature.
