FIBIS Blog

Image of Presentation FFHS Award 2011

Success of Spring Open Meeting Experiment

30 May | News,
Image of Presentation FFHS Award 2011
FIBIS Chairman, Peter Bailey, presenting FIBIS Webmaster, Valmay Young, with the FFHS Best Large Society Website 2011 Award

Record numbers attended the FIBIS Spring Open Meeting and Surgery in London last Saturday where FIBIS Chairman, Peter Bailey, presented FIBIS Webmaster, Valmay Young, with the Federation of Family History Societies Best Large Society Website Award 2011 which he had collected on her behalf last month.

At this meeting FIBIS also experimented with a few new ideas for helping those that can’t attend the meeting  in person.

Morning surgery

In the morning experts were available to answer questions and give research advice to those that could attend in person. For those that couldn’t attend experts were available to help online via Twitter, Facebook and even via webcam or online chat using Google Hangout. Armenian expert, Liz Chater, couldn’t attend in person, but was available to answer questions via the Google Hangout, Twitter  and Facebook.

Afternoon presentations

The two afternoon presentations “British India from Old Postcards, Haunts of Your Ancestors” by Robert Butterworth and “The Irish in India, 1790-1920” by FIBIS Chairman, Peter Bailey, were broadcast live via our YouTube channel and unedited recordings of the live events are available there for viewing.  There were a few minor problems recording the projector screen with the webcam, so the YouTube recordings only show the presenters speaking. The better quality back-up camera recorded a lot better, including the projector screen, and will be available, once edited, in the FIBIS Social Network for FIBIS members only.

Conclusion

The feedback we have had from this experiment has been extremely positive and, as a whole, the  experiment was great success, so we plan to use these methods again at our next meeting in October. If you want to take part in any future online surgeries, or watch FIBIS live broadcasts, here are links to the relevant accounts to follow or subscribe to.