Finding Speakers - Part 2

Last month I discussed finding speaker leads using exchange newsletters from other Societies. There are other good sources for speakers. Let's explorer some of those.

Once I had a speaker give a talk on the Genealogy of Our American Flags. He and his wife displayed about 25 different U.S. flags that he and his wife researched and had commercially sewn at a local Flag Shop. They were willing to speak for free but we offered them our standard honorarium.

Another time we had the manager of the Special Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library come and speak about their large genealogy holdings. He waived the honorarium in exchange for our then latest publication to place in their Library.

You can ask representatives from companies of genealogy software, DNA testing labs, photo archival supplies, and others to present their products in exchange for allowing them to sell their products to your Society.

Remember to contact local chapters of lineage societies such as D.A.R. and S.A.R. to come and speak on related genealogical topics in exchange for allowing them to promote membership in their organization.

Always ask your members to recommend good speakers they hear at various functions of other organizations. Your Society may not be the only one of which they are members. Be sure and get contact information if possible. And don't forget that you can expand speaker's topics beyond the standard genealogy topics to historical and social history topics that help genealogists to place their ancestors in daily life.

One of my speakers, Kathleen Trevena, has a variety of topics on social history that easily relates to genealogy and family history. I have had her speak each year for three years and still haven't exhausted her topics. I try not to duplicate a speaker more than once per year. Though sometimes I break that rule.

Do you read authors of historical novels? Do you read reviews of new genealogy books? If you can determine that the author is local to your society you might consider contacting that author to speak at your society about how he/she researches historical novels. There would be similar research methods genealogists can use. Maybe the author will come and speak if he/she can sell the books at your group.

One time many years ago Oprah had an author on her TV program who shared her black and white ancestry. She was able to get many of her two different families to appear on Oprah. I went to the local library and checked out her book. I found she lived local to our Los Angeles area but I never followed through asking her to speak. I was too busy getting speakers. Go figure! Oh well, my loss.

Another source for speakers is your local or regional Family History Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon Church). They have regular classes on many good genealogy topics. Perhaps you can get some of your members to attend these free classes and scout out new speakers. You do not have to be Mormon to attend.

That's all for now. Next month we'll talk about creating variety in your speaker's topics and creating newsletter articles that sell your speaker's topic to your membership.

Finding Speakers - Part 1A

This is an addendum to my post on Finding Speakers - Part 1.

I was going to wait a month before posting again but Gena Philibert Ortega, who has been a speaker at WAGS, posted to her blog Gena's Genealogy at http://philibertfamily.blogspot.com an article titled "Getting the Most out of Your Genealogy Society Speaker" that is quite appropriate to think about for finding and keeping speakers. I would recommend reading it.

Program Man

Finding Speakers - Part 1

Happy 2009 New Year. Let's start talking about finding good speakers for monthly meetings. My greatest resource is other society exchange newsletters. Every month I receive a stack of them to look through. WAGS participates in a newsletter exchange that makes this possible. You can also Google other societies to see if they have a Web presence and electronic newsletter. From these newsletters I gather potential speakers. Our Newsletter Editor also emails me electronic copies of other society newsletters.

Then I begin emailing society program directors for contact information of past speakers featured at their society. I ask about the presentation: How well it went, whether the speaker used Power Point or transparencies, and if the handouts were helpful. Sometimes I Google the speaker's name to see what I can find.

As I receive contact information I then email my potential speakers. You can also telephone and write but I rarely do this. In my prior posts I mentioned I try to keep my speaker searches and information in my Yahoo email account. My email Subject line is always Request to Speak at WAGS. I explain that I read about them from a certain society newsletter on a certain date on a certain topic. I ask for a list of all their speaker topics. I share a little about WAGS, what honorarium fees we offer for a one hour presentation, what fees we offer for mileage and what fees we offer for reimbursement of non-commercial handouts. I tell them when we meet, the number of members usually present, what A-V equipment we make available, our location and the URL of our website. I want them to get to know WAGS.

Once I have confirmed the speaker, date and topic I request a Speaker Bio, a short Summary of the Topic, and a picture of the speaker we can use in our newsletter. I use this information to create a Featured Speaker article for our newsletter, WAGS Tales. In addition to publicizing our speaker in our newsletter, our Publicity Director sends publicity information to newspapers in the surrounding cities.

Once I have all the Speaker details, I create our Speaker Agreement with the date, time and topic and other pertinent details. I will deal with Speaker Agreements in a future post. My Speaker Agreements are electronic Microsoft Word documents. I try to send all Speaker Agreements via email and allow the speaker to fill in the address information and electronically sign the agreement and return it via email. This saves our society paper, envelopes, and postage costs. Of course you can use snail mail. And there are those times where it is best.

This post is Part 1 of Finding Speakers. In my next post I will detail Part 2 of Finding Speakers. There are plenty of opportunities for finding speakers.

Speaker Calendar

In my last post I introduced myself as the program director for the Whittier Area Genealogical Society or WAGS and ended with the importance of creating a permanent email address such as Yahoo.com or Gmail.com that does not change everytime you change your Internet Service Provider or I.S.P.



In this post I will talk about how I created my speaker calendar in my email program. I have set up several folders for my monthly speakers. I used 0108-GM for my speaker for January 2008 General Meeting. I also used 0108-CC for the January 2008 Computer Class teacher and 0208-RC for the February 2008 Refresher Class. Because WAGS alternates classes every month one month would show 0108-CC and next month would show 0208-RC. Every month we have a paid General Meeting speaker so -GM will show up every month. All my speaker communication is moved into the appropriate folders so I can keep track of agreements sent, topics discussed and agreed upon, and other communication.



During the searching phase for a speaker I have my outgoing email in the Sent box and incoming email in the Inbox. As soon as I have an agreement for a specific speaker and month I move all the outgoing and incoming emails to that person's appropriate dated folder. Thus I have all the communication with each speaker in one folder. I then make sure that one of the speaker's emails is marked as unread thus showing a 1 next to the folder name. Folder 0108-GM would look like 0108-GM (1). By doing this I know at a glance what months have approved speakers. I then concentrate on the months that do not have speakers. I also maintain printed Speaker Agreements for each month. This approach allows me to easily communicate at Board meetings what speakers and topics I have lined up for the months ahead.



After my speaker presents his talk to WAGS I mark all messages as read thus removing the (1) in front of the folder. As I move through the calendar year and my speakers have completed their talks to WAGS I then begin my next calendar year by renaming the folders that have completed talks. For example, I might have several folders for 0108, 0208, 0308, 0408, 0508 that I can now rename 0109, 0209, 0309, 0409, 0509. With this preceedure I capture all of my speakers for 2 or more years in each month's folder. This allows me to make sure I do not repeat my speakers too often and let's me know what prior speakers and topics I had for that month. Since I have been doing this for several years I have quite a log of speaker history in each folder.



I realize this post has been more about organization than improving programs. Future posts will discuss more substantive ideas about finding speakers and topics. That's all for now.

Thanks,

Program Man

Introduction

Local Southern California genealogy speakers are a regular monthly feature of our organization, the Whittier Area Genealogical Society or WAGS. I am responsible for lining up 10 months of speakers and 2 months of member Show and Tell programs every calendar year for our General Meetings. We also have classes that alternate monthly between Computers and General Interest. And also a Beginner Workshop that runs concurrent during Class time. I only offer this information as a setting for my future posts to my blog BGP - Better Genealogy Programs.

I am not a professional and do not get paid for being the Program Director. My interest is creating better genealogy programs for my society. Hopefully by exploring our Society's programs and priorities your society might engage in helping this blog create better genealogy programs.

I will attempt to make this a monthly feature but only if it finds an audience who is interested in engaging me. I will also attempt to have some of my speakers post to this blog.

One of the first things I did as Program Director was create a unique email address on Yahoo.com for communicating to my Society's leaders and my Speakers. Yahoo.com and Gmail.com are both excellent because you can accumulate your emails in unique folders and always have your speaker communication at your fingertips. And even if you change Internet Service Providers you will always have the same email address.

This is all for now as I am getting ready for my family Thanksgiving time. And that's why I do what I do.