Recorded sessions

So… all week long The Legal Genealogist has lamented the fact that (a) there’s no way to be in two (or three or four) places at one time to take in all the sessions of the 2013 Federation of Genealogical Societies conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and (b) so many people who could benefit from the sessions of the conference couldn’t be in Fort Wayne this week.

And yesterday I discovered something buried in my registration packet. It says I don’t need to be in two places at one time — and you don’t need to be in Fort Wayne.

The company recording the audio from the sessions here in Fort Wayne — a mere 136 separate sessions — will be more than happy to sell you a CD of any recorded session for $12 per session or an MP3 for download for $10 during the conference (which ends tomorrow) with a 20% discount for the purchase of 10 or more sessions. (You can find the speaker list with session numbers and titles of sessions at the FGS Conference website.)

I should add that many of the genealogy speakers signed any proceeds of their talks back to FGS to support the Preserve the War of 1812 Pensions effort. (I know that’s what I did with mine.) So every penny of profit on many of these sessions is going right back to the genealogical community for a very good records-preservation cause.

And the company will sell you the right to listen to every last one of the sessions — all of them — all 136 sessions if I counted right — for $299 during the conference and $379 afterwards. You can choose between the MP3 CD-ROM and on-the-internet versions of the package for the same all inclusive price.

Now math has never been my strong suit. I need a calculator to figure anything more complex than two plus two.

But the calculator here in my computer says if there are 136 recorded sessions for a during-conference price of $299 and an after-conference price of $379, that’s a grand total of $2.20 per session if you sign up during the conference, and $2.79 per session if you wait and buy the package later.

I stopped off at the company booth today and double-checked that the during-conference price is available to both folks registered here and folks at home. So if you’re interested, you have to act today or tomorrow at Fleetwood Onsite’s website.

Now… the kicker is this. There isn’t any place on the company website today and tomorrow to try to buy the package online for the during-conference price. But the folks from Fleetwood who are here at the conference told me at 8:30 this morning that if you will contact the company through its website contact-us page during the conference (which closes at 6 p.m. EDT tomorrow, Saturday, the 24th), that special price will be honored.

If you don’t decide in time, you can still order the package afterwards and, even at the higher after-conference price, you’re still talking at least 136 hours of genealogy for $2.79 an hour.

Talk about a deal…

And you don’t have to be in two places at one time.