Saturday, June 28, 2008

Jamboree Musings - Post 3

Today was the Genealogy blogger Summit at the SCGS Jamboree - which I really looked forward to attending and participating in. I figured it was sort of a "coming-out party" for me, since I met only one genea-blogger before this conference. Oh boy! I did talk to Craig Manson, Dick Eastman, Megan Smolenyak, Kathryn Doyle, Elizabeth O'Neal and Sharon Elliott yesterday and this morning.

I was fortunate to meet George G. Morgan and Steve Danko before the summit just outside the conference room door, and we were joined by a healing Bill Dollarhide to talk about everything for about 15 minutes. Then the seven blogging summiteers went into the room, sat down and talked amongst ourselves while setup continued. Leland Meitzler had problems getting the computer to work, so Dick Eastman brought up his super-duper wireless satellite router system and got the computer up and going so we could show our blog "faces" to the audience.

While we were waiting to start the summit, we spied the medieval re-enactor folks out in the lobby with their sharp, pointy weapons...we wondered if they were the "Genea-Blogger Elimination Squad."

At 10 a.m., Paula Hinkel from SCGS introduced each of us. Here is a picture of Paula (on the right) doing the honors for (from the left):

* Leland Meitzler from Everton Publisher's Genealogy Blog
* Dick Eastman from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
* Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak from Megan's Roots World
* George G. Morgan from the Genealogy Guys Podcast
* Stephen Danko from Steve's Genealogy Blog
* Schelly Talalay Dardashti from Tracing the Tribe
* Randy Seaver from Genea-Musings.


Leland was the moderator and kept the conversation going for over 90 minutes, and then we took questions from the audience. There is a summary of what was said on Dean Richardson's GenLighten blog - excellent summaries. Thanks, Dean!

There were several other genea-bloggers in attendance, and Elizabeth O'Neal of the Little Bytes of Life blog took a photo with her cell phone and posted it at 10:28 to her blog during the panel discussion. Dick got it up on the screen about 90 minutes into the discussion. Here is a screen shot of her blog post, but please go see it here. Elizabeth deserves a blogalanche!


Alas, it went all too fast, and the audience of about 50 had good questions and enjoyed (I think!) the panel discussion.

What T-shirt did I wear? Well, the one I got for Father's Day - you can see it below along with Linda in her matching T-shirt.


Before everyone left for lunch, we got a group of genea-bloggers together and took a group photo. Below are from left to right:

Sitting: Kathryn Doyle (California Genealogical Society blog), Dick Eastman, George G. Morgan, Stephen Danko

Standing: Leland Meitzler, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Randy Seaver, Craig Manson (Geneablogie blog), Elizabeth O'Neal (Little Bytes of Life blog)



Unfortunately, Megan Smolenyak and several other genea-bloggers in the audience got away before we could get everybody together for the group photo.

I'll have more news and photos later today from the Jamboree. hopefully, I can attend two more presentations.

By the way, check out Craig's Geneablogie posts at http://geneablogie.blogspot.com/ for his take on everything Jamboree. I note that he already has the screen shot from Elizabeth's blog on his blog. Great job, Craig.

My hope had been to actually blog during the summit, but after yesterday's wireless shutout I didn't take my laptop down because I thought there would be no wireless internet available. Schelly had her laptop and it struggled to get online. If I had my laptop there, I could have done it once Dick Eastman set up his wireless network setup. Oh well...the best laid plans!

3 comments:

Taneya said...

thanks for the update! sounds like everyone had a great time! Maybe in a few years I can start to attend some genealogy conferences myself!

Jasia said...

Thanks for sharing your experience, Randy! Great post!

Charley "Apple" Grabowski said...

Love the T-shirts!