Oh, sure, you may know what the IAJGS conference is, and that it’s coming up this July 11-16, and that it’s going to be held in downtown Los Angeles at the awesome new J.W. Marriott at LA Live. After all, you’ve managed to find and read this blog! Perhaps you’ve even subscribed to our newsletter. But what about all the people out there who could potentially enjoy this conference, if only they knew about its existence, or even about genealogy in general?

We’re going to be making a concerted effort to reach out to those people, those genealogical “newbies”, in the coming months, but we can’t do it alone. We need your help.

So let’s talk about some ways we can all use the Internet to spread the word about the upcoming IAJGS conference to our friends and family members. It won’t take more than a minute or two of your time, it’s totally free, and it’s especially important for reaching younger folks — the next generation of genealogists and family historians — for whom the Internet and social media is like second nature but for whom the subject of organized genealogy may still be utterly alien.

First of all, there’s e-mail, of course. You could start by e-mailing your friends and family an update about your latest genealogical findings, or send out the latest version of each person’s family tree, to spark some interest in what you’re up to with “that wacky genealogy hobby” of yours. A nicely formatted PDF family tree or fan chart unexpectedly arriving in an inbox is a good way to get a conversation going among people who don’t usually pay attention to genealogical things. But with the conference coming up so soon, perhaps you could make an effort to include a note or two in your message about “this big Jewish Genealogy conference this summer in LA”, and how you’ll be attending, and perhaps your relative would like to come out to California with your for a day or two (or five!) to hear some of the lectures and participate in some of the programs…? Don’t forget to reach out to younger relatives and friends; this year, the conference is offering special super-low rates for kids under-18 and for full-time students 19 and over (with proof of student status, such as a school ID). If you’ve got kids or grandkids who are going college-looking in California this summer, maybe they could stop at the conference with you while they’re in town anyway?

But e-mail is only the tip of the iceberg, especially now that there are so many options for what is broadly referred to as “social media”. If you have a Facebook account, you can do quite a lot to promote the conference among your Facebook friends. First of all, you can go to the LA conference’s official Facebook Event page and click on “Attending” (or “Maybe Attending” for you wishy-washy types) on the right side of the page. This will add your name to the unofficial list of people who will be joining us in Los Angeles this summer — which stood at 102 people on Facebook, at last count. You can take a look at that list of names to start planning for the conference with other researchers you might recognize on the list.

This is a good start, but it still represents opting-in by people who already know about the conference and that they’re interested in it. What we really want to do is spread the news to people who don’t know about the conference yet. So here’s the next step to do that in Facebook: click the link on the top righthand side of our Event page that says “Invite People to Come”. You’ll see a little pop-up list of your Facebook friends. Click on the names of people you think might be interested in learning about the conference, and invite them to come check out our Facebook event page. You can include a personal note that mentions a bit about the conference and that you’ll be attending, or you can send them a link to this website, www.jgsla2010.com.

Here’s another thing you can do in Facebook to spread the word to new people: post a link to this website on your Facebook wall. It will show up in your activity feed, and perhaps a curious friend of yours will ask about the conference. That’s your chance to talk about what goes on at an IAJGS conference and all the neat programs, lectures, resources, films, vendors, tours, classes, and even food that will be available there. With luck, maybe your curious friend will also get bitten by the genealogy bug and learn something new about her family history.

Another way to promote the conference online is through Twitter. If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, you can sign up for one for free in about two minutes. It allows you 140 characters to say whatever’s on you mind. It’s very much like the “What’s on your mind?” status field on the top of your Facebook page. In fact, I simply connected my Twitter feed to my Facebook account so that when I update Twitter it also automatically updates my Facebook page too, to keep in sync. If you’ve already got some friends following you on Twitter, why not send out a quick Tweet about the conference, with a link to this site? Don’t forget to include our official conference hashtag #IAJGS, and you can even throw in #genealogy or #jewish if you want to reach a wider potential audience.

During the 2009 IAJGS conference in Philadelphia, three or four conference-goers Tweeted (i.e. “sent Twitter messages”) from the audience of various panels throughout the day, talking about the high points of what they were hearing, and offering up instant commentary on the days’ events. For people like me who were stuck at home unable to attend that year’s conference, reading the Tweets in real-time was pretty much the only way to keep up with what was happening and what new genealogical developments were being revealed. (To @BanaiFeldstein, @Kos2, and those other two intrepid Twitterers whose names I unfortunately don’t remember: thank you!) So don’t forget that Tweets from the conference should use the official hashtag #IAJGS. Why wait until you get home to talk about the latest news from the conference when you can do it right from your seat at a lecture?

These are all simple, free things you can do to spread the word about the IAJGS conference online. They would just take a moment, and they could really help get the news out about the conference. In the coming months, we’ll be sharing more ways you can help us publicize the conference, including posting a downloadable flyer to this website, which you will be able to print out and post on bulletin boards in your local area.

Got a great idea for how to share news about the conference? Post a comment below and let us know!