Welcome from the Conference Chair

Nashville, Tennessee, is known as Music City USA since its major export is country music. We have been home to the   Grand Ole Opry radio show since its inception in 1925. The mass appeal for the Opry came from its down-home goodness, real life feel, and the accessibility of its “stars.” These early stars of radio weren’t world famous vocalists and musicians. Instead, these folks truly came from small towns, mountains, hollers, farms and fields to share their love for music and good times with each other. In the early years, the word-of-mouth marketing for the Opry helped it to grow. But in 1932, the addition of an 878-foot radio tower allowed the show to be heard on AM stations throughout several states. Thus, technology helped the Opry reach the tipping point by extending its stage into living rooms around the country.

As personal historians, we are witnessing similar growth and appeal for our industry as a worldwide desire for connectedness and the technologies to facilitate such expand with each passing day. Print on demand, online life caching, streaming video, and high definition are some of the technologies our clients are using. To succeed in this business, we must familiarize ourselves with the various technologies while honing our interviewing and storytelling skills in any medium.

It is my great pleasure to tell you that the 2007 Association of Personal Historians Conference will provide this training in the myriad areas of our industry, from the high tech to the heart of our work. I have had the honor and privilege of leading the planning process for this event.

Fortunately, I have had a wondrous team of assistants and volunteers to facilitate, guide, and sometimes outright push this process through to completion. Couple that with a generous outpouring of knowledge, experience and expertise from our workshop presenters, speakers, and entertainers, and the awareness of our organization’s strength through sharing is overwhelming.

As early as last spring, we began gathering your ideas, questions, and input, combining them with the plans we hoped to carry out. The culmination of this listening and molding of our conference will be a multi-faceted, diverse mix of workshops, presentations, speakers, and social events manifesting a universal theme - LISTEN. As you read on about the specifics of our conference, I hope you will become enamored with the various opportunities we will provide to grow your knowledge and your business’s bottom line while forging friendships with like-minded individuals from all over the world.

I look forward to welcoming you all to Tennessee.

Kindly,
Jane Baxter
Conference Program Chair