The IAJGS 2020 Virtual Conference on Jewish Genealogy will be held during the weekdays of Monday, August 10, through Thursday, August 13, 2020.

Each Session will be one hour in length, and there will be 15 minutes between sessions. The sessions will be scheduled in two blocks of three sessions with a two-session intermission between the blocks. This two-session intermission can be used as “explore time” to watch pre-recorded videos or to attend other special interest group and birds-of-a-feather meetings that may be scheduled during that time.

We are using a production company called eShow, and they use a virtual conferencing platform called BigMarker.com. eShow will provide a menu-driven application so attendees will enter the “Attendee Service Center” and not rely on email links with passwords as in a Zoom environment. This will not be a Zoom environment.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Our provider calls this function “On Demand”, and it will be provided to paying conference attendees. We understand that the recording of a Live Session may take up to six hours to process before it appears on the conference On Demand Menu.

No.

Yes.

The Conference Organizers are hosting SIG/RD and BOF meetings during the Virtual Conference and extending attendance to these sessions “free” as a public service for people who have paid to attend the conference and for those who register as a “Limited Access Attendee” (this is an option on the registration form).

The Conference Organizers, particularly the Conference Chair and the Program Chair, will recommend a program to the IAJGS president and schedule the Virtual Conference.

We anticipate that a potential Virtual Conference would primarily consist of pre-recorded lectures and those could be viewed both during a scheduled time and on-demand for those in other time zones or for repeat viewings. The conference lectures would be open only to paying registrants and the on-demand feature would be available for a defined period of time.

Yes! We are reviewing offerings that will potentially include an Exhibitor/Sponsor Module and expect to provide marketing opportunities as well as the opportunity to thank our sponsors in our potential Virtual Conference.

Speakers will be selected from the large pool of speakers who signed acceptance agreements with us for the San Diego In-Person Conference in the event of a Virtual Conference. The conference organizers reserve the right to invite additional speakers at our own discretion - in the unlikely event that an overview of the Virtual Conference schedule appears to have a thematic or expertise "hole" in it. However, we do not anticipate re-opening the abstract submission process again in 2020 for a Virtual Conference.

If a speaker’s accepted proposal is selected for a potential Virtual Conference and they have somehow “opted out” already in terms of providing PowerPoint Slides and/or permission to record them, then the conference organizers will contact the presenter to ask if they would consider changing their “opt out” choices. We will only select presentations for which we can provide synced PowerPoint slides and from speakers who agree to be recorded and to make those recordings available to our paying audience during the time period that we specify.

Lecture, topics, format and schedule will be determined by the Conference Organizers, chiefly the Conference Chair and the Program Chair.

Typically, the conference owns the recording rights and would be restricted from sub-licensing those rights. However, in this case, we are still reviewing our options. It is most likely, that the IAJGS would retain the rights.

At the Virtual Conference, speakers have been offered “free registration” for the Virtual Conference in return for their participation as the primary speaker in it, whether for a live session or a recorded “On-Demand” lecture.

Any arrangement between the IAJGS and conference speakers in a potential Virtual Conference will have no bearing on future In-person conferences. The IAJGS Speaker Policies are currently under review as part of an Ad Hoc Committee and will remain a separate IAJGS decision.

No. The Conference Organizers will not be accepting applications for any new offerings whether from currently accepted speakers or from outside that speaker pool. The Virtual Conference will have fewer speakers and presentations than already accepted for the cancelled San Diego in-person conference.

The Conference Organizers are still determining the resources needed for a successful Virtual Conference given our audience's particular interests and needs. At this point, we believe that we will need: people to train our speakers; people to train our registrants; moderators/hosts for live interaction while waiting for a session to begin and for moderating and consolidating the questions that come in during live Q&A sessions; and, finally, a HelpDesk volunteer staff to handle real time technical problems during the scheduled Virtual Conference.

Thank you for your interest! Please write to Volunteers@iajgs2020.org

Thank you for your interest! Please write to Volunteers@iajgs2020.org

The Expiry Date for access to the IAJGS 2020 Conference “On Demand” Lecture Library will be 60 days from the end of the conference.

Yes, the IAJGS Annual Meeting of the Members will take place according to the IAJGS By-Laws on Wednesday, August 12, 2020. See the conference schedule.

Yes. The IAJGS 2020 Awards will be announced at the IAJGS Annual Meeting of the Members. Tangible certificates or plaques would be mailed directly to recipients after the Annual Meeting, and media publicity would follow.

Yes. These grants—the Rabbi Malcolm Stern Grant and the John Stedman Memorial Grant—have been awarded independent of and prior to the Virtual Conference in order to allow the funds to support projects that might be able to be propelled by the Shelter-at-Home experience the world currently faces. The grant recipients will be announced at the IAJGS Annual Meeting of the Members.