Conference Energy

My son teaching his class at the BYU conference.

Don't you just love conferences?  I love conferences.  I get to see and visit with so many friends, old and new.  Our team has enjoyed meeting with so many of you over the last couple of days at both the BYU Continuing Education Conference of Family History and Genealogy and the IAJGS in Salt Lake City.  We love talking to you all about our products as well as having the opportunity for you to sign up for our newsletter for charts and our 52 week newsletter for Zap The Grandma Gap.  I also especially loved seeing Matthew present his "Get to Know Your Geezers" class Tuesday.  Talk about a parenting payday!  But I would like to say that my team and I also really love the feelings we get being right there in the middle of it all.

Genealogy is, no secret to us within the community, contagious (for lack of a better word).  It's such an important work we do, connecting our families--past, present, and future.  There is such a force and energy around it that to say it's a hobby is almost a fallacy.  It may start as a hobby for some of us, but once you get going, you know it's so much more important than that little word.  Golf is a hobby.  Knitting is a hobby.  Jogging, scrapbooking, bowling, and baking are hobbies.  Genealogy... well, that's life saving on so many levels.  It's not a hobby.  Genealogy has the power to change people's lives almost instantly.  Even when we discover unhappy things from the past within our families, those things can bring so much understanding and healing to our present.  Eventually the knowledge of those things can change our future.  I know we all understand that on a logical level (I hope we do) but sometimes it's easy to forget.  Until you get to be around hundreds of other people feeling the exact same feelings and then it just becomes palpable and electric.  It becomes a tangible fact that this life of research and records reaches so far in every direction of time that we can't even fully comprehend the good we are doing.

So, I just felt the need to tap into that energy and share it a bit with all of you.  It was so great to see so many of you this week.  If not, I hope we'll see you at the next conference.  You'll find us there, happy to meet with you.  And if you are far away, or can't make it for some reason, well, say "hi" right here in the comments.  I would love to hear about some of your great conference moments from this week or in the past.  Conferences are a wonderful place to get energized, learn more and make new friends. See you at another one soon.