IGGP Board President Ingeborg Carpenter called it a Phoenix rising from the ashes. Many of the 800-plus attendees  whether German, American, Canadian, Australian or Brazilia — called it the best conference they’ve ever attended.

The formal name was the first virtual International German Genealogy Conference, which carried through the theme of “Researching Together Worldwide / Weltweit Gemeinsam Forschen” that had been crafted by the original in-person conference host committee from the Hamilton County (Ohio) Genealogical Society.

COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the in-person conference scheduled for Cincinnati, but IGGP found a worthy technology partner in Playback Now. It in turn vetted online event platforms and matched Whova for IGGP’s needs.

Virtual conference co-chairs James M. Beidler and Nancy Myers worked with an outstanding team: Luana Darby as program chair; Katherine Schober and Timo Kracke as publicity chairs; Sheri Fenley, who was Connections chair and then took over Sponsors and Exhibitors from Bernhard Guenther; Barbara Stanculescu, who handled mailings and helped with exhibitors; and Sebastian Gansauer, the DAGV liaison who took charge of designing an electronic program/syllabus.

Of course, it was important to manage the financial risk of experimenting with a virtual conference. That goal was met as the conference will end up firmly profitable. But just as importantly, it continued the “connections” theme from the successful 2017 Minneapolis and 2019 Sacramento events.

Also high among Jim and Nancy’s priorities were involving more people outside of America and providing a better virtual experience for sponsors and exhibitors, which had been a “missing link” in earlier virtual genealogy conferences.

All these goals were met as the team formulated an event that would keep the attendees busy throughout the eight days from 17-24 July. Nancy helped recruit many Germans to get involved in Connections sessions — Zoom breakouts based on geographic or other cultural topics — as well as a document translation room.

She also, with the help of several dozen volunteers, pulled off getting excellent closed captioning added to the pre-recorded lectures so that attendees would have options for English, German or Portuguese no matter the language of the speaker.

The first and last days of the conference were bookends with four marquee lecturers each day for a program called LIVE! During the rest of the days, pre-recorded On-Demand presentations were released each evening for viewing at the attendees’ leisure. And many speakers did live question-and answer sessions.

There were social events of sorts, including three virtual happy hours in which registrants could randomly network with other attendees. In addition to the planned Connections sessions, attendees had the opportunity on the Whova platform to schedule their own “Meet-ups,” and many did so. They also could upload photos and posted so many articles that it maxed out Whova’s capacity for that feature!

Thanks to the conference’s Gold sponsors, MyHeritage and FamilySearch, which sponsored special activities. FamilySearch brought in experts from the Family History Library to do free online consultations, and many attendees took advantage of that.

Special thanks also to Platinum sponsor “Friends of German Genealogy,” and to all the sponsors who supported the conference. 

“Researching Together Worldwide / Weltweit Gemeinsam Forschen”

17 July to 24 July 2021