The 3rd annual Charlottesville Family History Conference was attended by approximately 320  (now exactly 354!) people who had the opportunity to visit the new LDS Airport Road Chapel in Charlottesville on Saturday, March 28th.  This is the location of the new Charlottesville Family History Center which was the sponsor of the event.

Dr. Scot French of UVa’s Virginia Center for Digital History gave an informative presentation about the great potential of using technology to bring new life and methods to family, neighborhood, and community research.  He demonstrated some of these capabilities from the VCDH website and presented a class as well. 

Five classrooms were used to teach 25 classes and workshops beginning each hour ending at 4:00pm.  The topics, descriptions, and presenters’ biographies can been seen on the conference program.  A complete conference resource will be available online by April 3rd.  CD-ROMs of these materials will be available at the Charlottesville Family History Center on Tuesday, April 7th.

Conference attendees provided insightful comments and suggestions on how to improve future conferences.  The overwelming response was an “excellent” rating to all facets of the event.  When one class of approximately 70 attendees was asked to comment on the timing of the conference and competition from other area activities, an attendee suggested it be held twice a year which drew applause from the group. 

There are still lessons to be learned to make presentations to such large groups using internet, video projection, and audio interaction.   Next year’s conference will make better use of these facilities and this website to disseminate more information faster.  On-line registration was used by two-thirds of the attendees.  While there were a few problems, three hundred+ attendees where processed in less than 40 minutes. 

Conference organizers express great appreciation to Dr. French, all presenters, and others who made this event a success.  The date for next year’s conference will be announced in the near future.