Jamboree: Southern California Genealogical Society

If it is Thursday, it must be Burbank.

I landed yesterday at Los Angeles after a very bumpy flight from New York and checked into the Jamboree hotel venue.

This year's trip has been fast moving and I haven't yet recovered completely from the Tel Aviv-New York jetlag.

I just spent three days at the American Jewish Press Association conference in Washington, DC, interacting with editors, their staff, and freelance writers. It was one of the most interesting  AJPA conferences I have attended.

Particularly useful were several sessions on Newspaper Next 2.0. These excellent sessions covered the future of newspapers, focusing on how print media would evolve into interactive online portals for both consumers and businesses, while linking print and multi-media applications. There were several brainstorming sessions as we broke into small groups. For the first time, I was delighted to hear the words genealogy and family history when we discussed niche marketing.

Other sessions covered US politics, Israel, Iran and Jewish media topics.

Then it was back to New York, repack for the rest of my summer, and now I'm looking forward to this weekend. Many of my gen-blogging colleagues will be here. My program this afternoon is on gen-blogging, tomorrow is our first-ever Gen Bloggers' Summit and, on Sunday, I will speak on "Creating Hope" and how writing for a general readership informs people about the possibilities and achievements of Jewish family history research.

More to come as I report on other sessions of the Jamboree.