SLIG Announces 2017 and 2018 dates

Recent changes in the Salt Lake City meeting landscape brought an early holiday present to the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy – better meeting dates!

SLIG is pleased to announce that it will continue to be held at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center, and will move to the fourth week of January beginning with the 2017 program. 

Outdoor Retailer, a large city-wide convention bringing over 20,000 attendees to Salt Lake and Park City areas for their annual Winter Market, recently changed dates.  Commonly known as OR, the program has traditionally been held during the third week of January and literally fills every hotel room along the Wasatch Front during that time.  In order to maintain reasonable hotel pricing and accommodate extended stays for research, SLIG was wedged between the end of the holidays and the arrival of OR. “While it worked,” states Peg A. Ivanyo, current SLIG director, “it would never be described as ‘ideal’.”

Summer rumors of changes brought temporary fear to the SLIG committee, who had already opened registration for the 2016 program.  “A program that large has enough clout to boot even one with over 20 years of tradition out of town” stated Ivanyo.  “We had Hilton support and a promise not to cancel our contract if OR decided to overlap with SLIG dates, but being literally on top of each other would have introduced other problems such as increased airline costs and long lines at local eateries.” 

The eventual announcement that OR would move to dates ‘just prior to’ SLIG’s normal week brought a long sigh of relief.  It also set the stage for SLIG to negotiate similar pricing for dates much later in January during a better timeframe.

The date change "provides the opportunity for our participants who wish to tack on an additional week for research to arrive early, stay late, or even stretch their stay into February for RootsTech in 2017,” states Ivanyo.  

Dates for both 2017 and 2018 are posted on the website, slig.ugagenealogy.org.  Courses for 2017 will be announced at the 2016 banquet; seats are available for several 2016 courses.