Organize a Society Bus Trip to FGS 2013

By Dawne Slater-Putt

If you are excited about the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference next August, but are not excited about the prospect of driving to Fort Wayne by yourself, encourage your local genealogical society to organize a bus trip!

Many groups organize bus trips to the Allen County Public Library annually, and there are many benefits to doing so for next year’s conference, including:

• If Fort Wayne is unfamiliar to you, coming by bus means you do not need to pay attention to directions, navigate one-way streets or risk getting lost.
• It may be more economical to come by bus than to pay for gas for your personal automobile. Figure in the savings in wear and tear on your car, too!
• Parking is never a problem when the bus lets you out at the door to the library or hotel.
• It’s fun to attend a conference with friends.
• If this is your first conference, it’s likely someone from your society has attended one before and can give you some pointers.
• You can spend some time during the bus ride finalizing which conference sessions to attend, or perhaps even creating a research plan for the Allen County Public Library’s extended hours.
• When you are exhausted at the end of the conference, you do not have a long drive home ahead of you. Instead, rest or nap on the bus, or look over the materials you have collected at the conference or the copies you made at the library.

Some groups may choose to make the bus trip a fund raiser for their organization. By calculating what the actual cost will be and then adding on $2 to $5 per person, a society can make a small profit.

We hope to see a whole caravan of buses heading into Fort Wayne on August 20th next year!