I'm Leavin' on a Jet Plane

I had hoped to post Jamboree Day 3 before today, but alas... life (and my 2-year old) takes priority.

My bags are packed, and I'm leaving tonight for Washington, DC, to attend the Daughters of the American Revolution's 117th Continental Congress. My hope is to post some photos and news while I'm there, but... who knows. They've got me working as one of their webmasters, so it's likely that I won't have a spare minute.

Perhaps I'll get a chance to "moblog," though. :-)

So everyone have a wonderful week - I'll look forward to catching up on your adventures when I return!

Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth O'Neal

Jamboree Day 2 Continued: The "Genes" in Genealogy

Not to beat a dead horse, but the food at the Marriott did leave something to be desired. Concession food was offered (as a concession for the parking situation, I assume), but it was a) expensive, and b) didn't look very good. We didn't try the Daily Grill restaurant, based on the reviews of some Jamboree attendees (crowded and expensive). Thankfully, there is a new (since last year) food court across the street at the Burbank Airport.

So, after the Blogger Summit, my family had a tasty lunch at every toddler's favorite restaurant: McDonald's. I'm fairly certain that my daughter will not eat any form of protein that doesn't come in nugget form. This particular McDonald's does not have a Play Place (which frankly is fine with me, as they look like germy cesspools), and it looks more like the new McDonald's Cafe's that are becoming popular.

On a side note: I have friends who swear that McDonald's has better coffee than Starbuck's. I haven't tested this theory myself, but I'm getting tempted, considering the cost of a cup of Starbuck's coffee these days, and the fact that they're planning to close 600 stores soon, probably including the ONE in my town.

But I digress.

We didn't make it back from lunch in time for the 1:30 p.m. sessions, but at 3:00 p.m. I was able to attend Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's talk on "Trace Your Roots with DNA." I also stayed for her 4:00 p.m. talk on "Beyond Y-DNA: Your Genetic Genealogy Options." Steve Danko did an excellent write-up of both of her talks here, so there's no need for me to be redundantly repetitive. Plus, it's late, and I'm tired.


The fine folks at the FamilyTreeDNA booth.

I mentioned in my post about Jamboree Day 1 that one of my goals in attending this year's conference was to learn as much as I could about genetic genealogy. Sadly, I've had Megan's book, Trace Your Roots with DNA: Use Your DNA to Complete Your Family Tree, sitting on my nightstand for over 6 months now, and I'm only on page 101 (the excitement of raising a 2-year old doesn't leave me with much energy for reading these days). So I was very glad that there were so many sessions offered covering the various aspects of genetic genealogy.

I was also glad that Megan addressed DNA project management in her "Trace Your Roots" talk. Topics included selecting a testing company, how to recruit participants (especially the nervous type), developing a project scope, funding, and reports.

I haven't written about this before, but I currently serve as the administrator of my maiden name's DNA surname project, which I started earlier this year. My maiden name is so rare that (probably) anyone using it with the same spelling is related to me in some way. I'll write more about this project in a future post where I can go into a bit more depth.

Instead of attending a final session at 6:00 p.m., we wound up cruising the Exhibit Room again, where I visited with my good friends at the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) table. They were doing free, online searches of patriot ancestors for Jamboree attendees, and were quite busy all day! I'm guessing this had something to do with Arlene Eakle's talk on "Tracing Your Revolutionary War Ancestor" earlier in the day.

From what I heard, we missed another great evening session. Dick Eastman gave a talk on "Putting the Genes in Genealogy," which Craig Manson wrote about here.

Next year, I really must remember to attend those evening sessions. I wonder if I can get Randy Seaver to babysit???

Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth O'Neal

Jamboree Day 2: The Blogger Summit

Day 2 of the Jamboree began early for me. My daughter woke us up at 5:00 a.m., crying, with a poopy diaper. I’ll bet none of the other geneabloggers can say that.

Probably the session I was most looking forward to was the Blogger Summit, featuring Steve Danko, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Dick Eastman, Leland Meitzler, George G. Morgan, Randy Seaver, and Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak.

To be honest, I really wasn’t sure what to expect at this session. After all, what exactly IS a “Blogger Summit?” I think the concept was unusual, but also very forward-thinking of the SCGS for realizing what a valuable tool blogging is for genealogy, and for recruiting some of the most well-known geneabloggers to serve on the panel.

The discussion was lively and interesting and covered a variety of topics. The panel was moderated by Leland Meitzler who kept things moving for almost 2 hours. Dick Eastman “manned” a laptop computer and projector which displayed the panelists’ blogs as they talked. I had the pleasure of sitting in the audience next to fellow bloggers Craig Manson and Kathryn Doyle, who I had met in person the evening before.

An interesting side note: I was happy to learn that Randy Seaver does indeed have a wife – a lovely lady named Linda, who was kind enough to take a zillion photos after the session. The fact that she was sporting a t-shirt that read “Geneaholic’s Widow” is rather telling, though… but you can draw your own conclusions there. :-)

My Mobile “Incident”

You may already have read that I live-blogged, or “moblogged” (mobile-blogged), the event while it was happening. You can see my actual post here.

And here’s the backstory: As I was listening to the panel of blogging experts, I felt that it was such a great moment that I wanted to share it - right then and there - so I snapped a photo with my cell phone and sent it to my blog. My intent was not to offer a lot of content, but just to say, "Hey, look what's happening here! Isn't this exciting?" I thought so, anyway.

Dick Eastman was commenting on how blogs kept the news so current and showed a post from Craig Manson’s blog written the night before. I chuckled to myself because I knew that my post was even more recent, but I didn’t say anything.

Eventually, I pulled up my blog on my cell phone’s browser and leaned over to show Kathryn Doyle – I thought she would get a giggle out of what I’d done. Instead, she brought up my blog on her cell phone’s browser, and as I was drooling over her beautiful iPhone, I barely noticed that she got up from her seat and walked over to show it to Dick Eastman. The next thing I knew, my blog was live and large on the screen.

It really was a surreal moment as the panel of bloggers turned and looked at themselves. I think it was the only time they were at a loss for words!

For the record, this was not my first time moblogging. This post was sent while on the road to Burbank, and this one was sent on Mother’s Day from my family room couch when I was too lazy tired to turn on my computer. Moblogging is not my preferred method of blogging, as the photo quality from my cell phone isn’t as good as my camera(s), and I don’t have control over how my posts look. Plus, it’s really tedious to type on my cell phone’s tiny keyboard when I’m used to typing 70+ wpm on a regular keyboard, so I tend to keep my mobile posts short. But it works “on the fly,” and I can always go back and pretty up my mobile posts later, if I want to. I’ll write more about moblogging in the future.

Craig Manson wrote a nice post about my mobile post, and a few other bloggers, including Randy Seaver and Dick Eastman, mentioned it in their post-Jamboree articles. Many thanks to these bloggers for promoting my little blog... and Randy, I did indeed experience a “blogalanche!”

What you may not know is that in addition to this mobile post, I also “Tweeted” during the conference. By this I mean that I sent short updates to Twitter via my cell phone. These updates were available to anyone who clicked on my Twitter page or with whom I’m a “Twitter Buddy.” Tweets are slightly easier to do since they are only brief text messages, but it’s not always easy to sum up your thoughts in 140 characters (or less). I’ll post more on Twitter soon, too, as I feel that it’s a valuable resource for a variety of reasons. Oh, and thanks to Tim Agazio for joining the ranks of my Twitter friends!

Final Thoughts on the Summit

I was surprised to see that the room wasn’t filled to capacity, as many of the other sessions had been. My guess is that geneablogging is still something of a niche, despite the fact that there are already hundreds and hundreds of us out there, and many more are joining the ranks every day.

From what I’ve seen as a technology facilitator for the DAR, the “fear factor” still grips many people, as does the feeling of “why on earth would I want to write about my life/family/genealogy so that other people can READ IT?” Well, I’ll tell you why: genealogy is a collaborative effort, and if you don’t put yours out there, no one will ever see it and want to collaborate with you. The answer to who great-great-great-grandpa Dunn’s parents were might be out there, but you’ll never know!

Lastly, it was interesting to hear the perspectives of the various bloggers, especially those who had been at it for a long time. Many questions were asked and answered, and although I really didn’t learn anything new, I did come away with a valuable piece of advice, originally given to Schelly Talalay Dardashti by George G. Morgan, shortly after she first began her blog: “Don’t let it take over your life.”

I’ll confess: blogging is addictive.

Be warned.


Some of the bloggers I had the pleasure of meeting at the Summit:
Back L to R: Leland Meitzler, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Randy Seaver, Craig Manson, Me.
Front L to R: Kathryn Doyle, Dick Eastman, George G. Morgan, Steve Danko.

Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth O'Neal

Wordless Wednesday: Hey Baby!

"Hey Baby!" (SCGS Jamboree, Burbank, Los Angeles Co, California). Digital Image. Photographed by Elizabeth O'Neal, June 29, 2008.

About Wordless Wednesday.

Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth O'Neal

Jamboree Day 1: Live, and in Person

On the Road... Again

Our plan was to drop our dog off at the kennel at 8:00 a.m. and get on the road early.

Yeah, right.

We did drop the dog off on time, but we didn’t get on the road until around 10:30 a.m. Is it ever possible to be early – much less on time – for ANYTHING when you travel with a toddler? I would love to know how, as I have NOT mastered this technique yet.

We arrived at the Burbank Airport Marriott at around 1:30 p.m., and the parking lot was PACKED. Paula had hinted that parking was going to be a potential problem, but that barely described it. The Marriott parking lot is presently commandeered by construction, and with the offices in the building next door still in business on Friday afternoon, it wasn’t easy to find a place to park.

Add to that a hungry, stir-crazy toddler who'd been cooped up for 3 hours, and you’ve got some cranky adults who were supposed to be having fun, but wanted to strangle each other instead. Whose dumb idea was this?? Oh yeah, YOURS!

Thankfully, we were able to check our bad moods at the door and check into the hotel a bit early. The nice lady at the registration desk said we could leave our van in the 15-minute-only spot we'd found, which we did.

Getting to Business

After finally getting settled and cruising the Exhibit Room to say hello to friends we hadn’t seen in a while, it was 4:30 p.m., and I decided to ditch leave my husband and daughter behind to attend my first session.

There were so many great speakers and topics that I wanted to hear, but I tried to focus on three areas that were of the greatest interest to me: blogging (of course), using DNA in genealogical research, and genealogy as a profession.

So my first choice was to attend Schelly Talalay Dardashti’s session on “Gen-Bloggers.” As you may know, Schelly blogs at “Tracing the Tribe,” which concentrates on Jewish genealogy. But Schelly’s been at it (blogging) for quite a while, and she knows her stuff. She gave some examples of different types of genealogy blogs and talked a bit about how to start your own blog. While none of this was new to me, it was interesting to hear about it from her perspective, nonetheless.

I’m always intrigued by questions from the audience, as it gauges how much people really understand of what the speaker was discussing, and Schelly answered questions from quite a few attendees. I was surprised at how many people were not familiar with blogs in general, and/or did not read blogs or thought they were subscription or pay-per-use sites like Ancestry or Footnote!

I was not surprised, however, that several people were unaware of how easy it is to set up a blog of their own. One person wanted to know why Blogger would offer free space to bloggers... and no one really had a good answer for that, except that they're owned by Google, and Google makes money off of their hits.

After Schelly’s talk, I had the pleasure of meeting some of my geneablogger colleagues – if I can even consider myself to be in their circle: Randy Seaver was there, along with Kathryn Doyle and Craig Manson... some of the nicest people you’d want to meet!

Oddly enough, meeting them was like visiting with old friends that you haven’t seen for a while. It’s a strange phenomenon of today’s virtual society that we can create friendships – even relationships – with people we seldom, if ever, see in person. I can’t even think of anything to compare it to historically. Never before have we been able to sit in our homes and visit with so many people from around the world – all for the price of an internet connection! Sure, the telephone can call anyone, anywhere… but would you pick up the phone and call a stranger the way you’d visit a blog or a web site?

The internet truly is an amazing place, and I was reminded of this several times throughout the conference.

"Crashing" the APG

For my last session of the day, I decided to be brave and “crash” the meeting of the Association of Professional Genealogists, SoCal Chapter. After all, the schedule did say, “open to those interested in professional genealogy,” and I’m definitely interested.

I tried to sneak in as inconspicuously as possible, but I was immediately greeted by some very friendly ladies who told me I was welcome... even when I confessed that I was not a member of the APG, nor was I a professional genealogist! They did tell me about mentoring programs available with the APG, so I may be taking them up on this in the not-so-distant future.

The guest speaker was Gaylen Findlay, one of the creators of Ancestral Quest genealogy software. You may know that Personal Ancestral File (PAF) 5 is essentially a "slightly modified version of Ancestral Quest (AQ)."

Findlay gave a live demonstration of some of the features of Ancestral Quest 12, which I’ll admit were very intriguing, even to this long-time user of Family Tree Maker:

Database Conversion: You won’t even have to convert your file. AQ12 uses the same .paf data file that is used by your PAF 5 program. You can continue to use PAF 5 along with AQ12 if you so desire.

New FamilySearch: AncestralQuest is developing new features to allow you to synchronice your AQ or PAFdatabase directly with the new FamilySearch Family Tree database. These features are currently in beta testing and will be a free upgrade to users of AQ12.

To be honest, I haven’t used PAF since the early 1990’s when it was a DOS-based program, and I was sporting Windoze 1.1 on my 286 PC, so I’m certainly not an expert on the newer versions. However, I did like the way it interfaced with new FamilySearch.

Of particular interest was the way you can use AQ12 to tell the database when people in it need to be combined, or when information is incorrect. The bogus information won’t be deleted from the database unless the original submitter chooses to do so, but at least a notation will be made that some information is in question. That's better than nothing.

I haven’t decided if I will try Ancestral Quest 12, but I’m thinking of experimenting with PAF again (in my spare time). Any suggestions from you experts out there will be appreciated!

Into the Night

We had not registered to attend the special event banquet, featuring Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak’s talk on “Right Annie, Wrong Annie – Annie Moore of Ellis Island,” but I did hear that it was wonderful. Craig Manson did a nice write-up of the event, and even told about a "light moment" that made things quite interesting... especially for Megan!

I had hoped to get to sleep early on Friday night, but that wasn’t to be the case. My daughter stayed up talking (loudly) and climbing out of her crib until about 11:30 p.m.

Whoever said that "having children keeps you young" obviously never had any. A long night of talking-toddler makes me feel old as dirt in the morning.

Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth O'Neal

SCGS Jamboree: More Fun Than a Playgroup Full of 2-Year Olds!

"Jamboree Begins!" (Burbank Airport Marriott, Burbank, Los Angeles Co., California). Digital Image. Photographed by Elizabeth O'Neal, June 27, 2008.

After a busy, fun weekend, followed by a couple of busy, less-fun days catching up at home, I finally have a chance to sit down and write about our weekend at the Southern California Genealogy Society’s Jamboree 2008.

It was an outstanding conference, and kudos go to Paula, Leo, and the rest of the SCGS volunteers who produced this event. This was my 2nd year attending, and I must say I had a lot more fun this year than last!

You’ve probably already read some terrific articles posted by other genea-bloggers who attended: Steve Danko, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Dick Eastman, Craig Manson, Randy Seaver, and Kathryn Doyle of the California Genealogical Society & Library. Some wrote multiple posts, so you may need to search under "conferences."

I’ll try to present a slightly different view of things… which shouldn’t be hard. After all, none of those other bloggers had got to travel with a 2-year old!

Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth O'Neal

Blogger Summit Happening Now!

I'm sitting in the Gen-Blogger Summit at the SCGS Jamboree listening to some of the most popular and well-known names in genealogy blogging. Very exciting!

More later - I don't want to miss anything while I'm live-blogging!

Check out my Twitter updates to follow the action at Jamboree ( button in the upper left).

One of Those Weeks?

Ever have one of those weeks? The ones where everything happens, everything is due, everyone calls or visits?

I've had two of those weeks in a row, and I'm working on my third. My daughter finally figured out how to climb out of her play yard; the crib will be next - very soon - and then it will be all over for me.

But on the bright side, I'm on my way to the SCGS Jamboree right now! I hope to see some of my genea-blogger favs there, and will try to keep you all posted on the action!

For now, we're stuck in LA traffic on the 101 freeway. Sigh. Hopefully not another one of those days.

Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth O'Neal