[Ldsoss] Survey Results

[Dan Hanks]

On Wed, 5 Jul 2006, Dallan Quass wrote:

> Overall it's a good workshop.  A few people come in from out of town, but I
> estimate that 80-90% of the attendees this year came from BYU, the Church,
> or Ancestry.  I think it would be _much_ better if there were an effort
> driving people to work together on shared efforts.  I've only attended a few
> of the workshops, but I'm not aware of a single presentation that has had a
> broad impact outside the workshop - that has made the jump from workshop
> presentation to website/software feature available to the general public
> (except of course presentations from organizations about what they're
> already doing).

I've attended the workshop for the last couple of years and for the geek 
that's interested in genealogy work, im my opinion, it's "the event" of 
the year. I look forward to it eagerly each year.

But I'll agree with Dallan, in that I'd like to see the scope broadened a 
bit. Most of the presenters seem to come from the Church or MyFamily.com 
(that's not a bad thing, there's plenty of "cool stuff" happening in 
those organizations, but I'd like to see things opened up a bit) 
As I understand it the original purpose of the workshop was to provide a 
forum for BYU students doing research in Family History technologies to 
present their research. I think that's a good goal to continue with, but 
again, it would be nice to see the workshop expanded a bit (perhaps to two 
days?) Perhaps we in the community just need to organize an 
"un-conference" the day before. Gather together a bunch of geeks 
interested in genealogy for a bunch of hours with free wireless and see 
what comes out of it.

Just rambling now...

-- Dan