What some people call "spring" and "summer," genealogists refer to as "conference season." Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

Head over to our self-serve events calendar and add your society’s annual meeting, your library's workshop, your family history cruise or other genealogy-related event. (If you need 'em, posting instructions are on the Forum.)

Whether your family history travels take you across town or across the country, use our online research trip packing list to make sure you don’t forget anything. Here are just a few of the upcoming genealogical goings-on:

• The National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC,  hosts a free, day-long genealogy fair April 23. Sessions cover Civil War pensions, Freedmen’s Bureau records, WWI draft registrations and more, and you'll get to see the Archival Research Catalog and Access to Archival Databases (with its recently added immigration records) in action.
  

• The National Genealogical Society annual conference is in Kansas City, Mo., May 14-17. Classes run the gamut from general genealogy topics to research in Midwestern locales. Members can register for $210 and nonmembers for $245, or attend a single day for $100.

• Besides going to classes at the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree, June 27-29 in Burbank, Calif., you can attend a genealogy blogger summit, sit in on ethnic research roundtables or access several genealogy databases free in the TechZone. If you’re a Southern California Genealogical Society member, you can register for $65; nonmembers pay $80. Day rates also are available.

• July 16 at 10 am, the New England Historic and Genealogical Society offers a free presentation on preserving your family's records at its Boston headquarters. See the group's lectures calendar for more free learning opportunities.

• The Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies (FEEFHS) holds is annual shindig in Aug. 1-3 in Pittsburgh. It features keynote speaker Stephen P. Morse (legendary creator of the One-Step Web Pages) and plenty of other presentations. Registration costs $120 for FEEFHS members or $150 for non-members, or attend a day for $90.

• Swing down to Philadelphia Sept. 3-6 for the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference. Hear about regional topics such as Colonial and Mennonite research, as well as broader subjects including tracing women and finding wills. Register for the whole shebang for $175, or a day for $95.