Friday, June 27, 2008

Jamboree Musings - Post 2

Still no pictures from me -- somebody left the camera in the suitcase in the car in the parking lot across the street (it was me!). Maybe tomorrow!

The best laid plans of men and genealogists sometimes need to be changed ... I posted this morning about wanting to see Carl Boyer's talk at 3 p.m., but I got to talking to folks and by 2:55 all of the seats in that room, and in several other rooms, were taken. Ooops - it's an early crowd - now I understand why people leave a session early and rush in while everybody else is coming out. So I wrote Post 1 in this series in the SCGS Tech Zone.

After I finished my blog post, I went wandering around the exhibit hall. I found Megan Smolenyak in a quiet moment and disturbed her concentration - we must have talked for ten minutes without breathing. She introduced me to Marcy Brown, who works with Megan in Roots Television, and we talked for awhile too - Marcy spent some time in San Diego years ago and was interested in my San Diego family history. Oops - time to go to the next talk...

I hadn't planned on going to a 4:30 talk, but after checking the schedule I decided to go to Shelly Talalay Dardashti's talk on, what else, Genealogy Blogging! She did a great job of telling about the how, when, where, why and who of blogging - naming names and URLs. There were a number of genea-bloggers there nodding at the right times - Kathryn Doyle, Elizabeth O'Neal and Craig Manson besides myself.

I figured I'd better call Linda to see what the plans for dinner were. We went to the Outback in the nearby Empire Center, since we didn't want to eat in the hotel grill and didn't have banquet tickets to hear Megan's talk on Annie Moore.

It turns out the hotel doesn't have free wireless Internet access - they have a phone cable connection for $9.95 a day. I'm glad we're staying only two days!

This has been an interesting experience so far - I "know" many of the people I meet from our online connection - either a blog, web site or email, but I've not met any of them in person before (except for Tom Underhill). We kind of glance at each other's nametag and then say hello and shake hands. Or they call my name before I see their nametag and I have to quickly glance down to catch a name. I've met a whole bunch of great genealogists and it's like we're already old friends. They know my stories and I know theirs...

I think I'll settle down onto my king-size bed and read the syllabus - at least the talks I've missed so far.

Unfortunately, my hopes to "live blog" specific talks won't happen. There is no room for a laptop in the cramped conference rooms. So you are stuck with these "after-action" reports.

Tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. is the Blogger Summit - what should I wear? Maybe I'll show you in a post tomorrow.

1 comment:

Family Curator said...

Hi Randy, It was good to meet you yesterday after Shelley's talk. Thanks for the quick lesson in linking -- I will be very busy after the Jamboree winds down! I am looking forward to the Blog Summit session today. See you then!
Denise,
http://familycurator.blogspot.com/