Back home again!

It is great to be back home again in New Mexico!

WDYTYA Live 2011 was a great experience - despite feeling a bit under the weather - and I managed to see some of my Bombay Dardashti cousins and Persian and British friends.

Genner personalities also included Lisa Louise Cooke (blogging for Family Tree magazine), photo detective Maureen Taylor, and Dick Eastman. Dick will be back in the UK in about six weeks for the one-name guild event.

Tracing the Tribe, of course, will be back in the UK in May for the Society of Genealogists' Centenary Conference and the JGS of Great Britain's Manchester one-day conference, followed by the National Genealogical Society's event in Charleston.

I'm trying to get things organized during March, while at home.

I'm already looking forward to next year's event. Wondering when the NBC version of the show will spawn a US-version of WDYTYA Live here at home. The event is so different from what we experience here at gen conferences and it might really take off as it would attract those who are really just beginning and want a "gen lite" experience.

Even better, our daughter arrived yesterday for a visit. Unfortunately, she seems to have the "bug" that is going around New York (and many other places!).

Chicken soup seems to be on the menu over the next few days, and also hoping it helps take care of this still coughing blogger and the bug from Salt Lake City!

Sorting through what seems like a thousand emails, notices from Jamboree, submissions to other conferences.

London: Making connections!

It was good that I spent Monday (my arrival day) running about and getting communications arranged.

In the evening, I organized some advance blogs, tweaked my WDYTYA Live presentation, had dinner in the hotel, including a huge bowl of delicious chicken and barley soup. Then serious jet-lag hit.

On Tuesday, I decided to stay in and get more advance blogging and research done, began contacting friends and cousins and arranging to see everyone.

The social calendar filled up quickly. Tuesday was dinner with some of our Bombay Dardashti cousins who came into town. Wednesday there was coffee with an old old friend - haven't seen each other for many decades. Thursday evening I spoke at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain, Friday was Shabbat dinner with Persian friends, and I'm hoping to see the London Talalay cousins this evening.

We sett up the MyHeritage.com display stand on Thursday. The first day (Friday) of the Who Do You Think You Are LIVE show was crowded from the first minute it opened. When we arrived, there was a long line of people waiting to get in and it seemed everyone came to visit us.

On Friday, Lisa Louise Cooke dropped by to record short pieces for her blog with Daniel Horowitz and with me. Dick Eastman was around, and we said hello to Maureen Taylor.

Today - Saturday - we're expecting an even bigger crowd. Dick Eastman just dropped by:

My talk this afternoon - in the Society of Genealogists' workshop series - focuses on "Creating Online Ancestral Communities."

We've had one day of partial sun, cloudy the rest of the time, and raining today. For our friends back in New Mexico, I'm suffering from sunshine withdrawal.