Jamboree: Day One

What a day!

I arrived very early at the hotel with fellow Mogilev researcher Hilary Henkin. Checked in and we went down for a good breakfast.

At the next table were two of the NEHGS staffers; one of whom had a Jewish genealogy question. Hilary had some errands to run after breakfast and I wandered over to speaker registration to pick up the syllabus, name tag, and daily planner.

As I was also representing MyHeritage.com, I was wearing a MyHeritage hat.

This morning, the Genealogy Guys interviewed me on a video podcast (vodcast), discussing DNA testing, general Jewish genealogy, Ashkenazi and Sephardi genealogy and MyHeritage.com. Today was the first time that Drew and George were video podcasting; they did 10 interviews. Dick Eastman and Matthew Poe are also interviewing for RootsTelevision.com.
The meeting rooms were filled to capacity in today's sessions. A reliable conference source says that there were about 1,100 pre-registered attendees and that walk-ins will likely add several hundred more to the final count.

However, even with all these people, the room arrangements seem adequate, with some meeting rooms located in the main building and all the meeting rooms in the convention center building.

Geneabloggers.com had goody bags for each geneablogger, while Thomas MacEntee handed out Mardi Gras beads to each blogger.

We began to gather in various corners of the lobby and the convention center. Kathryn Doyle of the California Genealogy Society, Sheri Fenley, footnoteMaven, Susan Kitchens and I were in the lobby; Elyse Doerflinger joined us. Back in the convention center, Steve Danko was there waiting to connect with a fan. Randy Seaver of Geneamusings was there and we were happy to see Craig Manson.

I was waiting for an old friend to arrive. Steffani and I were friends back in Teheran and hadn't seen each other since then. She found me on Facebook when our genealogy blogging community joined en masse. We had a nice lunch and reminisced about our lives way back when and caught up each other's lives today.

The vendor room was really busy, and every seat was full in the tech center - where people could try out - for free - the many available databases.

I spoke to the Footnote.com people and heard about some special future plans that cannot be shared at this time. Be patient - Tracing the Tribe readers will be very interested in those future plans when they are made public.

It was a great honor to meet Tony Burroughs while he was at the FamilyTreeDNA booth with Bennett Greenspan.

Bennett's new talk on DNA for females, adoptees and lineage connections was based on three fascinating case studies, which I'll talk about in a post tomorrow. Jan Meisels Allen of the JGS of Ventura County - and an IAJGS board member - was in the front row!

After a great dinner with Bennett and Max, and a quick talk with Suzanne Russo Adams of Ancestry, everyone decided to turn in and rest up for Day Two.

FootnoteMaven and I had some Internet problems, which were resolved by the engineering staff. Two bloggers pounding away on keyboards were the only sounds, until I began dozing off at the keyboard.

For now, it's time to get some sleep, as tomorrow will be even busier as it starts at an early morning Ancestry. com-sponsored breakfast on Family Tree Maker 2010.

More tomorrow.