Our "organizations" are mostly non-profit, with an educational mission and an obligation to provide a "public benefit".

Yet there is seldom any mention here of clinics or seminars held at preservation conferences, recently some organizations don't even provide a list before their events, and it is also difficult to find any information on these activities in summaries of those events posted after the fact.

For many years the NMRA maintained a listing of clinics and seminars in support of their national organization and the regional organizations. I am unaware of any similar support effort in the railroad preservation or railroad history hobby/industry.

Are any of your organizations doing anything newsworthy in the educational area?

PC

Yes, but not ready to release the details yet - please PM me.

HRA's spring conference next month has two days of seminars.

Details on them are here.

I will be attending the HRA conference at Strasburg. Hopefully the HRA leadership is planning on Videoing the seminars and placing them on their website or their Youtube channel so that the knowledge presented there can reach a wider audience of those who cannot attend, or for those of us who need a refresher.

The menu of the 12 seminars does not show which is on which date or at which time. Will there be only one seminar at a time?

Phil Mulligan

It looks like it is possible to attend any ten of the twelve seminars.

The utility of discussing seminars and clinics in any field in a forum like this is directly proportional to the availability and accessibility of the content to the public, as it happens or afterwards.

If any forum, seminar, panel, etc. is considered proprietary and available only to those that paid $250 or $995 or $1,995 or whatever to attend the conference.convention/expo, well........

(Note: I'm not being specific about railroad history or preservation here. This covers everything from ComicCon to professional development seminars to trade conferences.)

Given that the networking is no less valuable than the seminars in the case of HRA, it's well worth attending if you can. Also, not every presenter wants to have their presentation recorded.

Because of the business model HRA uses, the registration fee for their conference is only $125 --- about what a good hotel charges for one night.

Bob H

TRAINS.com has streamed live selected ATRRM (now HRA) fall seminars in the past, and I think these live sessions were in the free area of the site, not subscribers only. Presumably TRAINS will be doing more of this in the future.

It is not always physically possible for every member of the HRA to attend every conference. I can make it a point to attend the ones held on the eastern side of the country but probably not the ones out west. Maybe for those who cannot attend in person an option could be created to attend virtually via livestream. We certainly have the technology.