Somehow, another week has flown by and it’s time for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings.
He has a very timely (for me) challenge this week:
1) What was your best “genealogy find” this week (or this month, or this year)? Was it a new ancestor, a new record, a new conclusion drawn, a new photograph, or something else?
My best genealogy find was learning about the Czechoslovak Genealogy Society International’s first virtual annual conference. I’d never attended this conference in person and only learned about this conference a week ago while attending the Texas State Genealogical Society’s online conference, of all places.
The conference opened on Wednesday, 13 October and the live presentations end on Saturday, 16 October. However, there is an On Demand portion with additional sessions that will be accessible next week.
I’ve listened to many sessions and all have been excellent. There were a number of presentations geared towards the Czech/Moravian/and Bohemian members, but there are been quite a few Slovak sessions and, more importantly, many sessions about the Carpatho-Rusyns, who were my ancestors living in an area that is today eastern Slovakia.
I heard talks about a lady who has traveled the back roads of Czechoslovakia for 50 years! She was fascinating as she explained all the cousins and neighbors she has met and all the customs and clothing traditions she has learned.
There were presentations about daily life with all the political changes through the last several hundred years and about local job occupations, holidays, and military records.
There was a Carpatho-Rusyn meet up where we talked for an hour plus several chat sessions pertaining to Rusyn life.
The conference has been excellent and I am looking forward to the On Demand extra sessions.
The only down side was that because I learned about the conference so late, I missed the early bird deadline and it cost a whopping $259. Next year, I’ll be sure to sign up at the Early Bird rate and save a lot of money.
I don’t know of any other conference where I can meet so many Rusyns at one time and it was fun. 🙂
Thanks, Randy, for this week’s challenge.
How lucky you were to find out in time to watch the live presentations. It is wonderful when a niche area can have a conference. Enjoy the on-demand presentations.
It actually might be more sustainable for a relatively niche group to continue to have its conferences online. It’s great that the group put on the conference this year. I hope you are able to attend again next year.
I hope they do at least a hybrid conference. Many of the members seem to live in middle America and are used to attending in person.