While checking out the National Genealogical Society (NGS) 2009 Conference in the States Proposal Guidelines, I found the guideline for projection requirements rather interesting:
Type of projection—overhead, slide projector or digital projector (this is for scheduling purposes only). Overhead or slide projectors will be provided by NGS; speakers requiring digital projectors must provide their own.
I, personally, haven’t used an overhead or slide projector in many years. In the conferences I’ve attended recently, I don’t believe anyone has used a slide projector . I’ve seen an overhead projector used in a few instances, usually when the speaker used the overhead to write as s/he was speaking.
Admittedly, I haven’t attended an NGS conference or an FGS conference, so I can’t speak directly about the number of speakers who use slide projectors or overhead projectors . Nevertheless, in the past couple of yeats, I have attended many local, regional, and national genealogy conferences as well as several professional scientific conferences. Nearly all speakers used digital projectors.
Given that the technologies NGS provides – slide projectors and overhead projectors – are now approaching obsolescence, it’s odd that the NGS requires presenters to provide their own digital projectors.
Eventually, this too will change.
Copyright © 2008 by Stephen J. Danko
Steve,
It is probably not the conference that is behind the times but the hotel where the conference is being held. Many holtels provide the screens, microphones and projectors as part of the room rental.
Sherry
Steve,
On second thought, most hotel conference rooms probably have the digital projector already mounted in the room. So the NGS probably only needs to know the speakers who need “antique” equipment that would normally have to be brought into the room by hotel staff.
Sherry