IAJGS solidifies bonds with both FamilySearch and Ancestry

The last few months have included so many amazing new cooperative efforts among genealogy giants that I only spent some short passing moments wondering where the Jewish genealogy community was in all this.[1] In the last two weeks, however, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) has announced two new appointments that seem to solidify relationships with both FamilySearch and Ancestry.[2]

IAJGS Advisor

Shipley Munson, of Sandy, Utah, has been appointed IAJGS Advisor to assist the board of directors in refining and implementing its strategic plan.[1] Munson comes with a history of great success in both the private sector (including Frito-Lay, Gillette, and Apple Computer) and non-profit sphere (FamilySearch). He is Chief Marketing Officer and Director of the Outreach Division for FamilySearch and was creator of the largest nationwide genealogy conference in the United States, RootsTech.

Last year FamilySearch provided the technology and expertise to online video stream some IAJGS 2013 (Boston) presentations in IAJGS Conference LIVE! This was a joint production of IAJGS, and FamilySearch, with generous support of Harvey Krueger. As a result, those who were not able to attend the conference in person were able to to participate virtually, selecting from among 50 presentations. IAJGS and FamilySearch will do the same for the IAJGS 2014 conference in Salt Lake City (27 July-1 August 2014). 50 presentations will be streamed for at-home viewing. Go to the following link to register for either the conference and/or IAJGS Conference Live! : https://conference.iajgs.org/2014/registration_form.cfm.

It looks like Munson will be advising IAJGS on technology integration and marketing efforts for its member societies. For this he will draw on his experience with over 500 genealogy societies and recruitment of over 170,000 volunteers for the 1940 Census indexing project. This sounds like Jewish genealogists could be in for some very exciting times with Munson on-board.

IAJGS Board Member

The IAJGS FaceBook page included an announcement of the appointment of Quinton Atkinson, of Orem, UT, as IAJGS Director-at-large. Atkinson is North American Director of Content Acquisition and Partner Development at Ancestry.com., has been with the company for 16 years and has participated in ten IAJGS annual conferences. He has many years experience working internationally with repositories in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Mexico, and China and has developed cooperative relationships with organizations such as United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, JewishGen, The American Jewish Historical Society. 

IAJGS Early-Bird Registration

As long as we're speaking about the conference, don't forget that early-bird registration ends on 31 May 2014 for this year's 27 July - 1 August IAJGS conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. Why pay more?

Notes:
1. See: the Ancestry Insider blog. Also this infographic.
2. Special thanks to James Tanner's Genealogy's Star blog and to the FamilySearch blog for alerting us about these announcements.