The Ancestry.com Town Hall Meeting

Earlier in the month Ancestry.com hosted a Webinar, a one-hour presentation by four of their top managers and half-an-hour of responding to listeners, subscribers to Ancestry World Edition, questions.

The Webinar is audio with slide support, most of what you'd get from an in-person presentation without the cost and inconvenience of travel. Around 1000 people participated live. The timing of the live presentation didn't fit my schedule, but now everyone can view the archived Webinar here.

This is a welcome initiative from Ancestry. Insight into what the company aims to achieve, how they are organized to achieve it, and notice of the additions and other changes (mainly improvements) is welcome.

The statistics alone are impressive. One million subscribers; eight million users (Rootsweb?), 5,000 servers.

The news of new content becoming available, including all Canadian censuses soon and more from the London Metropolitan Archives, is nice.

Improvements to the website and relevance of search results is promising, although I'm tempering my enthusiasm. I'll take the over the top marketing terms in the presentations, especially from the CEO, with a grain of salt until we see delivery.

Ancestry apparently have a relationship with some of their harshest critics. If you want to have your gripes addressed it seems it's good to be a really squeaky wheel.

This kind of communication with, if not accountability to, the client community would be a good step forward in cementing relationships for other organizations. Did I say LAC?