A conference for stay-at-homes

So you didn’t manage to get to Cincinnati in May for the National Genealogical Society Conference. And real life interfered with your hopes of getting to Birmingham in August for the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference. In fact, getting more than one flight of stairs away from your computer can be a chore sometimes.

Not to worry. There’s a virtual conference for you. And The Legal Genealogist will be there for one of the chat sessions, taking your questions on researching courthouse records.

It’s Family Tree University’s Fall 2012 Virtual Conference, and it gets underway at 9 a.m. one week from today, on Friday, September 14th, and runs through Sunday, September 15th. Registration is required.

The three-day conference has 15 video presentations organized into three tracks and you can sit in on any of the presentations on your own time from the comfort of your own home. Plus there are a number of live chat sessions scheduled (including mine!).

Registration for the three-day pass is $199.99, but there’s a discount code available — along with a sneak preview of some of the videos — at The Genealogy Insider that will save you $50 on your registration.

Here’s the program overview (more info here):

Genealogy Technology Track

     • Power Up Your Web Searches, by Thomas MacEntee.

     • Scanning Secrets, by Denise May Levenick.

     • Smarter Online Census Searching, by Diana Crisman Smith.

     • Best Websites for Finding Historical Maps, by Lisa Louise Cooke.

     • Tricks for Using FamilySearch.org, by Thomas MacEntee.

Research Strategies track

     • Secrets to Tracing Female Ancestors, by Lisa A. Alzo

     • Finding Land Records Online, by Diana Crisman Smith

     • Research Logs for the Rest of Us, by Thomas MacEntee

     • Paperless Pedigrees: Organizing Your Genealogy Electronically, by Denise May Levenick

     • Top 10 Tools for Social History, by Gena Philibert-Ortega

Ethnic Research Track

     • Using UK Civil Registrations, by Rick Crume

     • Mastering German Place Names, by James M. Beidler

     • Canadian Immigration Records, by Lisa A. Alzo

     • Cook Up Answers About Immigrant Ancestors, by Gena Philibert-Ortega

     • Tracing Irish Ancestors in Griffith’s Valuation, by Rick Crume

Live Chat Schedule

FTU instructor and Clue Wagon blogger Kerry Scott will be on call as conference supermoderator — joining in on message board discussions and live chats all weekend. And she’ll be hosting three chats:

     • On Friday, the topic is Discussing Source Documentation.

     • On Saturday, the topic is Best Genealogy Tablet Apps.

     • And on Sunday, she’ll be hosting the Sunday Brunch Free-For-Fall.

And there are three other chats scheduled that are open to all conference registrants:

     • On Friday, at 2 p.m. EDT/ 1 p.m. CDT/ noon MDT/ 11 a.m. PDT, Thomas McEntee hosts a discussion on Choosing a Cloud Genealogy Program.

     • On Saturday, at 2 p.m. EDT/ 1 p.m. CDT/ noon MDT/ 11 a.m. PDT, you can join me for a discussion of Researching Courthouse Records.

     • And on Sunday, at 4 p.m. EDT/ 3 p.m. CDT/ 2 p.m. MDT/ 1 p.m. PDT, Lisa Alzo will host Share Your Stumpers: Ideas for Your Brick-Wall Problems.

Hope to “see” you next weekend!