Saturday, June 12, 2010

My Saturday at SCGS Jamboree

I had many good intentions to not schmooze as much and to be a good genealogy student and attend every session! 4 out of 7...but they were a good four, and I had fun the rest of the day.

Hurried down at 7:45 a.m. for breakfast in the bloggers lounge, then hustled to Michael John Neill's talk at 8:30 a.m. about tracking migrants in different records and with some unique methods. Michael's specific case was migration from New Jersey to Ohio, but he used several other examples too. The best tip I got was to find migrants from one area to another by putting birth place (county/state) and death place (county/state) to find people who may have migrated together. Michael used Rootsweb WorldConnect for his main example, but Ancestry Member Trees could be used too.

Then it was off to the Blogger Summit I which started at 10 a.m. I was on the panel with Thomas MacEntee as moderator, Steve Danko, Elyse Doerflinger, and Miriam Midkiff. We talked for an hour about the whys and wherefores and how-tos of blogging, but it seemed like 20 minutes. The room was packed (maybe 130 to 140?), and there were probably 35 to 40 bloggers in attendance. I tweeted throughout from up on the dais (as did Miriam), and there were another 10 or so tweeters keying furiously. We took a picture afterwards with 25 genea-bloggers smiling and laughing.

I rushed over to the lunch area and got a hot dog and some cookies for lunch, then hustled back to get a seat in the back rows where I could run my laptop power cord to the wall. The Blogger Summit II featured Thomas MacEntee as moderator, Craig Manson, Schelly Dardashti, Lisa Louise Cooke and Kathryn Doyle. They discussed other aspects of blogging. I tweeted more furiously during this session since I wasn't on the panel.

Then it was off to the Pavilion to watch the live Genealogy Gems podcast hosted by Lisa Louise Cooke, with special guests Suzanne Russo Adams of Ancestry.com, Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective, and Chris Haley who was the banquet speaker the night before. I tweeted this right up until the end when the hotel wireless died for awhile.

I went back to the bloggers lounge, and hooked up the laptop to read my email and blogs. As bloggers came by, we took many pictures which are already on Miriam Midkiff's Facebook albums. I finally went into the Exhibit Hall later and met Michael John Neill, and talked to several other genea-bloggers and exhibitors. I missed Jean Hibben's concert from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. somehow - but many of my colleagues didn't. I'm sorry we missed it.

Linda and I had dinner at the hotel restaurant. Just after we ordered, Cheryl and Becky walked in and they joined us for a fun dinner - lots of talk about family, trips and genealogy bloggers. Then it was up to the room to get the laptop and put Linda to bed, and then down to the blogger lounge to write my SNGF post and see Facebook pictures. Finally, I wrote this post while about 15 folks talked loudly in the background with much laughter. Elyse is pretty loud and really fun - Thomas gave her an Easily Excited badge ribbon for good reason!

Geneabloggers met today include (adding to my list from last night):

Elyse Doerflinger
Katherine Borges
John D. Reid
Jo Arnspiger
Donna Peterson
Liz Morgan
Denise Levenick, Michael John Neill
Adam Hansen
Dean Richardson

I know that I met several more today, but can't remember right now!

Just a reminder - there will be no Best of the Genea-Blogs on Sunday from me this week.

3 comments:

Renate Yarborough Sanders said...

Sounds like you all are having a blast! Thanks so much for keeping us in the loop!

Renate

Anonymous said...

Great classes. I learned about Pennsylvania land records, New York Research and how to Twitter
and met a lot of professional bloggers

JDR said...

It was great to meet you in Burbank Randy. Only problem with Jamboree is too many things to do ... can the DNA folks please figure out the cloning thing so we don't miss so much!