Monday night brought another successful turnout for the second Irish genealogy forum hosted by The Record in our new Community Media Lab. The subject of the presentation by Lisa Dougherty, a volunteer with the National Archives, was "Finding a place of origin for your Irish ancestors."

A total of 49 individuals turned out, with more than 15 new faces and many of the same people who attended our first Irish night on March 10.

After talking to many individuals after the event, I found that several of them were interested in what kind of future events The Record would be hosting in the location in the future - great news for us looking to engage more of our readership with each of the events that we plan to hold going forward.

Check out a full recorded live-stream of the event below.

Read more »

An amazing crowd of just over 50 individuals attended The Record's community-driven forum on Irish Genealogy in our newly-opened Community Media Lab, showcasing what is possible for these types of events in the future.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we kicked our promotion for the Irish forum into high gear after the poor results we had with our initial attempt at a tax forum Tuesday evening.

Using updates on The Record's website, social media accounts, blog posts, and the online event-planning website, Eventbrite, we were able to attract a fantastic crowd of interested individuals for last night's presentation.


Read more »

When it comes to trying new things related to community engagement, digital tools, or training our staff members, Jonathan Cooper, Journal Register Company's VP of content has been telling us in the ideaLab for sometime to follow the Nike approach and "Just Do It."

We did just that at The Record this spring when it came to trying to organize community-driven forums and other events in our new Community Media Lab, a room we set up with a television screen with PC hookups, free wireless Internet, and enough space to sit roughly 50 or so people comfortably with a speaker up front.

The first of such forums was planned for Tuesday evening, with a Tax Tips forum led by one of our community bloggers, Kevin O'Leary of Marvin and Company, P.C. in Latham.

We ran house ads in our paper for over a week and a half promoting the event and pushed it out several times via The Record's social media accounts, not to mention pushing it out on several blogs, including this one, and even passing traditional paper flyers around town.


Read more »