Genealogy Conferences: Highlights From IAJGS 2016

This past week, Geni headed to Seattle, Washington for the 36th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy. We had an amazing time seeing old friends and meeting new visitors eager to learn more about collaborative genealogy in Geni’s World Family Tree.

The Geni booth at IAJGS 2016

The conference got off to a fantastic start with the Share Fair on Sunday. The exhibit hall had a steady crowd all day with people reuniting with old friends and learning more from various exhibitors.

Geni curators Adam Brown, Pam Karp, Hatte Blejer, Randy Schoenberg, and Benjamin Schoenbrun

As has become tradition at IAJGS, we had an awesome team of curators in attendance, many of whom spent a great deal of their time at the booth to talk to users, answer questions, and help people with their family trees. The curators have also set up the Jewish Genealogy Portal to help users researching Jewish genealogy collaborate on Geni.

The MyHeritage and Geni teams

This year we joined the MyHeritage team with our own booth next door. It’s always a fun time when we can get together with the MyHeritage family!

New users making fascinating discoveries on Geni

All week, there was a constant stream of attendees stopping by to check out Geni for the first time. These resulted in some wonderful discoveries right at the booth. One woman found her connection to the World Family Tree after inputting just three people. Once she connected, she found photos of relatives that she had never seen before. Another gentleman found his grandparents on separate branches through a simple search. Thanks to his search, he was able to bring the two unconnected branches together.

Last five minutes of the conference and still lots of folks at the Geni booth!

Another attendee made a fun discovery when we were able to show her how she was related to curator Randy Schoenberg. It made her day and she later tracked him down for a photo with her new cousin. It’s wonderful to see people having fun finding relationships to each other at the conference. Where else but Geni’s World Family Tree would you be able to have an experience like that?

Special thanks to our fantastic team of Geni curators!

On Thursday, the curator team hosted a Birds of a Feather meeting for Geni users to come together to swap stories and ask questions. Afterwards, they all reconvened at the Geni booth for a group photo!

We had a great time at IAJGS 2016 and we can’t wait to see everyone again next year in Orlando, Florida!