If I have learned anything about the genealogy community, it’s this: No one has a monopoly on wisdom. Ancestors are a tricky lot to work with–and there is not a cookie cutter research methodology for all of them.

When I have had questions, I ask and the community has always helped. I’ve never felt left out just spread too thin and feel like I lack personal time to tackle the major projects I would like to finish.

What I have seen in the past couple of years is a few community members who feel their views are of more merit than the status quo. It also seems to be some social posturing and some animalistic behaviors that disenfranchised me enough to unsubscribe from a couple mailing lists temporarily, so the proverbial dust would settle. Having passion is one thing, but tipping the scales in favor of a sharp tongue does no one any good.

The situation with the SSDI demands that we as genealogists do what we do best–master another field of study–legislation. If the organizations that are non-profits are limited with their ability to lobby, then we must all put our backs into the hard work that lies ahead for us.

A comparison was made about the Ark and the Titanic; Stephen King once wrote of the Great Wall of China. Not only was it built by hand but you can it from space.

But this post and other recent posts around the blogosphere surrounding the SSDI reminds me of Joan Miller’s “Genea-Bodies” post this past spring, following the first RootsTech. The online genealogy community has a voice that is heard far louder than that of the offline community. This voice can indeed be mobilized to support issues that concern us as genealogists.

The “Face of Genealogy” series of posts a few months ago was a great example of using the voice to change the perception of genealogists. The current campaign surrounding SSDI and other records access issues is an even better example of using the voice to try to enact changes in the world that affect us positively.

I only wish that we had discovered this voice before the companies decided to exploit it for their own financial gain. (Not that there is anything wrong with financial gain. Quite the contrary, I wish there was more of that! )

I posted about the current Genealogy Paradigm Shift in my blog earlier today: http://michaelhait.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/the-genealogy-paradigm-shift-are-bloggers-the-new-experts/

We DO love our own. I am a Facebook, Google+ and Twitter friend to hundreds of wonderful people! If I need help all I have to do is reach out with a question. That is the beauty of the genealogy community.

I followed the Rootstech debacle with both a personal and professional interest. I am attending the conference so of course I wanted to keep on top of what was going on. Professionally I manage my companies trade show program and topics surrounding trade show issues are interesting to me.

I had no problem with the Rootstech policy…as long as it had been communicated from the beginning to exhibitors. I believe we found out that was not the case and I feel that was poor form on their part.

Some of the posts on the various social media sites were out of line in my opinion. Fire somebody? Cancel your registration? Really?

For me personally I was not expecting an immediate decision to be made when confronted with the obvious outrage from the genealogy community. I was, however, expecting a response, any kind of response. “We hear you and will get back to you.” One simple sentence can go a long way towards calming a crowd.

My comments weren’t about your post. There were quite a few people who wanted a more immediate response, not just you. Also, my primary beef was with calling people idiots, which was a guy who was not you (I don’t remember the guy’s name, but I definitely remember that it wasn’t you). I just think that even when someone IS an idiot, it’s not necessarily productive to tell them on their Facebook page in front of everyone.

So you were a peon, too? Imagine that.

~C

As the leader for social media at FGS and for the FGS 2011 conference, I can tell you that no one was paid for their services. It was all volunteer. We had a great team. And we actively monitored the chatter. And we still had lives. And we had the same tools that are at the disposal of any entity, non-profit or for-profit.

Remember:

The Ark was built by volunteers.
The Titanic was built by professionals.

Cheers

Thanks to technology [such as push notifications on smartphones], it doesn’t take very long to see when a problem is occurring for an organization in social media, and in this case, on their own Facebook page. Now, what that response would be, I didn’t say. I wouldn’t and didn’t expect the response to be a definitive decision, but a quicker and diplomatic response on Saturday, and not just on their Facebook page but elsewhere, would have done wonders to smooth ruffled feathers so that it wouldn’t escalate to people calling other people names.

In fact, in my blog post [written on Monday morning after their decision reversal], I was trying to carefully lay out a social media system for a conference like Rootstech so that maybe in the future a situation like this could be curtailed. I contend that if Rootstech had had a stronger foothold in the social media realm [as did FGS], that this matter could have been smoothed over before people became nasty. This is part and parcel of public relations.

And I like to think the organizers of FGS, who had a successful social media campaign, were very well-paid, but I’m going to guess that many people including volunteers put in many hours to have a successful social media campaign and subsequently a successful conference. And though I was an Official Blogger for them [and thus one of those social media peons, to use your term] and my registration was comped, I know for a fact that the registration was not $1200.

Are you saying that in order to have a successful social media campaign with dedicated social media people, a conference has to charge $1200 [or a similarly high price] for registration?

~C

It would also have to be a fairly well-paid person, because a low-paid peon wouldn’t be able to unilaterally make the major changes folks apparently want on demand at any time of the day or night (like changing a conference’s vendor management strategy). In my experience, that’s usually the sort of decision that comes from several well-paid people, in fact.

My understanding from the blog post I read was that the word went out to the book sellers on Friday morning. The first post I read was dated Saturday. That’s a one-day delay right off the bat (and if the post had been done right away on Friday, perhaps this could have been resolved in a matter of hours). Surely it didn’t kill us to wait until Monday at 7:30am local time to find out that the decision was reversed.

I don’t know whether RootsTech does or doesn’t have a dedicated social media person (although I’m guessing they don’t), but I’d argue that having one would not have significantly changed the timeframe here.

I do know of conferences that have dedicated social media people, but registration is $1200, not $129, and they still have crapstorms on their Facebook and Twitter pages.