The Footnote team recently attended the FGS Conference in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I have been 
to a lot of these conferences over the past year, and it was great to see some familiar faces of attendees and other vendors. It was, however, the first conference for Trevor (our bulldog Affiliate Manager), Gordon (the customer support guru), and Charlie (the honorable sales guy).
For three days we had the opportunity to meet a lot of people who came to visit us at our booth. We met with current Footnote members who provided some great feedback and ideas on how to improve the site. We also had a lot of people who came by because they were told, “You have to go visit the Footnote booth.” It’s always great to have positive comments spread about our site by word of mouth. Our announcement about our partnership with the Allen County Public Library also created some buzz in the local media: we were interviewed by a few radio stations and magazines.
We normally feature our regular booth, but this time we were able to team up with our friend Dick Eastman to include his Laptop Lounge area. The must-have candy bowl was complemented with lounge chairs where conference-goers could take a break. (I’ll admit that the Footnote team also took advantage of the lounge chairs from time to time.)
We also held Footnote member meetings where members and non-members were educated and entertained by our own Beau Sharbrough. We initially scheduled one meeting only, but we had so many people sign up that we needed to schedule additional meetings. We plan to continue to hold member meetings as much as possible when we attend events like this. These meetings are a great opportunity for us to get to know our members better and provide them a forum to tell us what they want from Footnote.com.
Overall, we had a great conference that exceeded our expectations. Thanks to FGS for putting on a great conference and a BIG thanks to all of those who came by to visit us. We love meeting with people who share the same passion of researching history and learning more about our ancestors.
The next conference for the Footnote Team will be the Northern Utah Genealogy & Family Heritage Jamboree in Ogden, Utah, on September 15. If you are attending that conference, we would love to have you stop by and visit.
