The Maus Conference

On Saturday, 9 May 2009, a large German genealogical society known as “Die Maus” held a convention in Verden/Aller, Germany. This association has a large membership in the northern half of Germany, with additional members from other countries like Holland and Denmark where the cultural heritage is similar to that of Northern Germany.
The convention was held in the “Rathaus.” Americans would call such a building a Town Hall. A nearby Lutheran Church office building was also used, and there were approximately 500 people in attendance through the day. Elder and Sister Howlett, Elder and Sister Lund, and Patricia Mollemans, all working in FamilySearch support in the European Area Offices in Frankfurt, Germany, attended as official LDS Church representatives. Jerome Grasser, a supervisor, was ill and unable to attend more than for just a couple of hours, but he was there long enough to make important contacts with representatives of other organizations with whom he had scheduled to meet.
The town Mayor and other dignitaries welcomed the genealogists, and a cameraman from the local media and some other reporters were there. Among others, these reporters came to our display and spent time interviewing two of us (Sister Lund and Elder Howlett).
As we did our planning for this conference, we estimated how many handouts we would need that describe how one could get started with FamilySearch Indexing, but we didn’t estimate very accurately. We were blessed however, because as we were duplicating the materials we made mistakes and printed them as single-sided printouts instead of double sided. The solution to that was to print again putting the second side on the back of the already printed pages. This effectively doubled the number of printouts we had, and to that we added some more that we found from a previous printing. Thus we planned for about 20, but ended up with nearly 60. Within the last hour of the conference the last one was taken.
We also were blessed by having been inspired to bring a digital projector. Once we were setup, Elder Howlett found that there was a white wall surface visible to the side of our display. We had set up a computer for Sister Lund to use to demonstrate Indexing, but by connecting the projector to her computer, instead of just one or two observers, there were at times as many as 15 people watching what she was doing as it was displayed on the wall. She was sitting with her back to the crowd, so people could see her screen, but now they could also see the projected image, and she didn’t even know how much attention she was stirring up. Many of those watching picked up the information sheets that were in our rack next to her. Others of us, who could speak a little German, would try to pick out someone in the crowd and give them a little more information. There were many very advanced genealogists there, but almost all of them responded favorably to our invitation to have them get their family members and neighbors involved through this entry-level activity. Thus we were able to get these genealogists on our side to act like missionaries to get others involved in our indexing projects.
Those of us who could speak German were very busy most of the time responding to people’s inquiries. Even though Sister Howlett couldn’t speak German, she was very often able to work with someone who could speak English, or who brought with them a list of questions they wanted help with. She could read from their list, and search for a name, etc. When not kept busy in that way she took a few pictures.
There were many who came to our table to see if FamilySearch could find any answers, and for many of them we could. The best part, however, was that many would learn how to find the answers themselves using our suggestions, so they would leave very excited to be able to do it themselves. One of the advantages of FamilySearch is that you can do it yourself at home on your Internet-connected computer. When that became clear in their minds, they were willing to let someone else, who was waiting for our attention, have their turn. During the heaviest part of the day, there were often three people waiting to talk to each of us, but we never saw any of them become impatient and leave.
Sister Mollemans gave one of the scheduled formal presentations that were held in the Lutheran building. She was very apprehensive about giving her presentation, which was to be at 2:30 pm, but after working with so many different people who came to our tables asking questions, she felt much more at ease. It seemed that all the answers she was finding for the people were part of her presentation. It made it much easier for to present her ideas when she had just used the information in helping people. She was grateful for her experiences at our display, as they made her topic flow much better for her.

As the time for her presentation approached the hall filled to standing-room-only, and she was able to present a description of the FamilySearch effort to make Genealogical records available for easy access and without charge through the Internet. It was her first presentation of this type, but she was happy with the results.