Genealogy notes 31 March 2012 - Day 4 of AFFHO Congress

The 2012 AFFHO Congress is over and the last four days have gone incredibly quick. An update on yesterday's blog - I forgot to mention that the conference dinner was sponsored by NSW BDMs although they didn't present any papers at the Congress. A representative whose name escapes me now did do a very short speech which prompted a few tweets to 'bring back the wildcard'. Other sponsors I've chatted to over the last few days not previously mentioned include Ancestry, Openbook Howden Design and Print, Abbott Printers and Stationers, State Records South Australia, State Library South Australia and the Adelaide office of the National Archives of Australia. A full list of Congress sponsors is here.

I collected my very weighty conference proceedings first up and I hate to think how many trees were cut down! It's good to get the other papers as with four concurrent sessions you miss so much. I haven't had a chance to look through it yet but the weight was noticeable in my handbag all day!

Now to the last day's sessions. As usual the day started with a plenary session - Stephen Young on Descendancy Research - When You Can't Climb Up Your Family Tree, Branch Out. Stephen is a good speaker and I enjoyed the talk which was well illustrated with his own family history examples. But his message could have been delivered in five minutes and is really something that most of us do anyway, although I know I'm not as lucky in contacting distant family members and finding treasure troves of photos and documents. I guess what I'm coming to is that this shouldn't have been a plenary session and that seemed to be the general feeling of those I talked to at morning tea time.

The next session I went to was Mike Murray's Ten Top Tips for Finding Your 'hard to find' UK ancestors on the Internet and while I already do a lot of the things Mike mentioned, I still managed to pick up a few tips on using the big subscription databases such as Ancestry and FindMyPast. Mike is a good speaker and his ten points were covered well in the time period.

Then it was the trek back to the exhibition area for morning tea and the trek back afterwards - I found this good because at some conferences if everything is close together you can find yourself sitting for most of the day without a chance to walk and stretch out. Almost like enforced exercise to walk off those delicious chocolate cookies!

This next session I was really torn between Roger Kershaw talking about the National Archives UK and David Holman's Source for Mr Goose and Mrs Gander: Overview of UK Repositories (and I wondered if David's should have been a plenary session as others had the same dilemma). Anyway I ended up at Roger's session where he took us through the website explaining various features and outlining changes and future plans. It was most useful as I often get a bit lost on the site but his delivery style is very dry and a few more jokes/humour wouldn't go astray.

At 1.00pm Geniaus organised  a photo session for all Congress geneabloggers so you can see what A Social Media Mob looks like with our beads and put faces to names. Over the next few days/weeks we should get lots of blog reports to read as most haven't had the time to do it during the Congress and Geniaus is coordinating this. Stay tuned!

After lunch there was the final plenary and this was Dan Poffenberger talking about FamilySearch 2012 and Beyond and again this plenary fell into my category of product promotion by a sponsor (and why FamilySearch had more plenary sessions than the principal sponsor FindMyPast made me ponder). Dan is an entertaining speaker and his walk through the FamilySearch website was informative but I would have liked to see more time spent on some of the features like the Learning resources and the wiki.

For the very last session of the Congress I took the final opportunity to listen to Colleen Fitzpatrick talk about another one of her cases - The Curious Case of James/Jake/Smithers/Gray and I will never think of my family history as complicated again. My problems are simple compared to others! As usual Colleen was entertaining and it would be great to work on cases like that.

Then it was raffle draw time and there were some very excited winners. Kerry Farmer from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies gave a brief blurb on NIGS which is more in keeping with my idea of sponsorship promotions at conferences (also similar to the brief speech from NSW BDMs at the congress dinner). Although I guess it depends on what organisers offer to potential sponsors in the congress sponsorship package and it is always a vexed question at archive and library conferences I've attended over the years.

David Holman as Chair of the Federation of Family History Societies had one more role to play and that was to hand out the annual awards to Australasian winners. In the Best Websites Awards the overall winner was the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, with NZSG taking out first, and the Genealogical Society of Queensland second and Genealogical Society of Victoria third in the Overseas websites category. The overall winner of the Elizabeth Simpson Award for best family history journal went to Ancestor and the Genealogical Society of Victoria. Very exciting that New Zealand and Victoria took out the overall winners awards and well done to all the others.

Thanking the Adelaide organising committee was next and I think they did a very good job of organising a smoothly run congress with very few hiccups that I could see. As usual I will do a conference overview blog and my overall thoughts will be in that after I've done some more pondering.

The final task was the handover to the Canberra 2015 Congress and the Convenor gave a few highlights on the venues which include the National Convention Centre, the Australian War Memorial and Parliament House, all former haunts of mine so I've definitely put it into the calendar.

Now it's time for me to pack up here at the hotel, move back into the caravan and head off to Berri, South Australia Max's home town (although he was born in Port Lincoln). From there we will travel back along the Murray River and should be home in time for Easter. It's been a great few days and I will be sad not to see all my congress friends today. Safe travels home everyone!

Genealogy notes 22-27 Mar 2012 - At 13th Australasian Genealogy & Heraldry Congress

The trip over to Adelaide was great and as usual we wandered from our original itinerary and it's just as well we always give ourselves more time! We ended up staying a night at Dimboola in western Victoria (still trying to get over recent flooding), then onto Kingston SE on the South Australian coast (home of Larry the Big Lobster) where we couldn't resist a fresh cooked lobster and of course the obligatory champagne to wash it down and then we went to Goolwa, a very historic town at the mouth of the Murray River. From there we went up to Brighton and the nearest caravan park to where our family live. It was great to spend some time with them before I moved on into the CBD to be close to all the action at the 13th Australasian Genealogy & Heraldry Congress.

After checking in, I went down to the Migration Museum for a quick meeting with Catherine curator of their exhibition Who Are We Now? and to see how they had used one of my blogs on my Irish ancestors. The social media aspect of the exhibition was quite small but when it eventually moves online there will be more scope for online involvement. Still it was a thrill to see a page from my website blog and a small quote on why I think blogging our family histories is so important. I had an even quicker look at the other  non permanent exhibition outlining the life of a Japanese woman (Portrait of My Life: Tomono Wynn's Story) and it was a really interesting way to tell a person's life story. In the same building is Behind the Wall, the story of the Adelaide Destitute Asylum and some of the unfortunate people who lived there at various times. I've always been fascinated by asylums (several ancestors were inmates for various reasons) and am always drawn to photos and stories of inmates - there really is so much history inside asylum walls (same for prisons where even more of my ancestors resided)!

From there it was a quick dash back to the registration centre at the Adelaide Convention Centre where I collected my congress satchel and its various goodies (I always love taking it back to the hotel room and spreading the contents out to see what I've got). It was also a chance to have a quick look at the exhibitor stalls although some were still busy setting up and there were lots of faces I knew so quick chats here and there. One of the advantages of staying close to a congress venue is that you can duck back to your room and leave the satchel before heading back over for the welcome reception. The other advantage is that you generally run into other congress attendees, and I met lots of people in the hotel lift as well!

I'm not sure how many people are attending the congress, but there were lots of people at the reception and I managed to say hello to old friends from my former home towns of Brisbane and Canberra, while catching up with people from current home town Melbourne and Sydney, not to mention Adelaide and Perth. I didn't see anyone I knew from Darwin or Tasmania but with so many people it's hard to know who's there and who isn't. I love conference attendance lists so that you can find out who's there and actively look for them but so far I haven't seen one for congress.

While there were nibbles and soft drinks at the reception, I joined Kiwi  friends (New Zealand for American readers) Seonaid (Auckland City Libraries) and Robyn for dinner and international speaker David Holman (from Cornwall and Chairman of the Federation of Family History Societies) also joined us. Over a wide ranging discussion I enjoyed a soft shell chilli crab which was to die for and washed down by an equally good Margaret River semillion sav blanc. David made us all envious when he brought out his iPad to show us various apps and tell us about his travel plans while here in Australia.

Despite a much later night than I usually keep, I still woke up at 5.30am this morning all eager to get to Congress. The official opening is at 9.00am with an address by John Bannon AO, Chair of the National Archives of Australia Advisory Committee and former Premier of South Australia. At the reception last night, Geniaus (aka Jill) handed out her blogger beads (an innovation she brought back from Rootstech 2012) to a number of us who will be tweeting and blogging about the congress over the next four days. The Twitter hashtag is #AFFHO12 and I will try to pull some of the blogs together in this Diary and I will use AFFHO12 as a tag for this blog as well.

I always enjoy the congress which only happens every three years, and this one already seems bigger with its four days and four concurrent sessions plus plenary sessions, but there are congress proceedings so for all those talks I miss in person, I can still read the paper. Although often it's not quite the same but you can't be everywhere at once! And if I don't hurry up, I'll miss the opening. Stay tuned for congress updates and perhaps even breaking news!

Genealogy notes 29 Sep - 4 Oct 2011 value of genealogy conference papers

I've been a bit quiet but only because I was determined to finish a long standing project. A while back I told the Victorian Association of Family History Societies Organisation (VAFHO) that I was doing a complete listing of all papers presented at their conferences between 1995 and 2010. The details of the project are here, plus a link to the online list. As this is just a diary update I wont' go into all again, but I am glad that it is now completed.

I've also been busy reading my two books for review and I hope to finalise those by the end of this week. Then I will only have the CD publication and the scrapbooking software to review. I like doing reviews but they do take time and they always seem to come at the same time!

Some of my e-newsletters have been Snippets (Queensland Family History Society), Public Record Office Despatch (PROV), Now & Then from State Records NSW, qsa bulletin from Queensland State Archives, Lost Cousins, and the SAG e-newsletter from the Society of Australian Genealogists.

The other major task that's kept  me quiet has been updating my three talks for the Goulburn Murray Association of Genealogical Societies (GMAGS) this coming Sunday. I'm looking at Mining Ancestors, Newspapers Online and Caring For Your Family Archives so it will be fairly intensive day with something for everyone.

While up that way I will also be giving a talk on Researching Military Ancestors at the monthly meeting of the Cobram Genealogical Group. I'm a member there and their representative on VAFHO but I don't get up there that often for monthly meetings.

So another busy week coming up.