NGS 2012 - Day 1

What a great day!!

NGS 2014 will be in Richmond, Virginia.

NGS 2015 will be in St. Charles, Missouri. 

AND remember next year NGS 2013 will be in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I met the entire contingent from the FHSA (the Family History Society of Arizona).  The two of them.  I'd love to know if there are other attendees from Arizona other than George and Linda.

Today there were only three time periods for sessions.

At 11 am I was in a VERY crowded room.  Tom Jones spoke on "Strategies for Finding 'Unfindable' Ancestors".  I loved his comments about the search will be time-consuming, tedious and expensive (for travel).  He provided 4 examples, which are available in the NGS Quarterly, of how to work around this problem.  I think I liked the two comments about not expecting names to be spelled the same (I knew that, but it's good to be reminded of this fact) and that a person is more than his/her name. 

Since I was not scheduled to attend one of the luncheons I had 2 1/2 hours to visit the vendor hall.  I picked up some great ideas from the Oklahoma Historical Society booth on how to find some elusive ancestors.  I also learned more about the familysearch wiki.  I sort of understood it, but Paul Nauta spent time explaining more.  Thank you, Paul.  I briefly said hi to Lisa Louise Cooke, who sent her regards to all of us in Arizona.  (In March she was the speaker for the Family History Society of Arizona's annual meeting.) I found some wonderful old postcards at Wolf's Head Books.  A little costly, but oh, how great!  AND I sat down for about 20 minutes.  I really should go back later and look at some other states. 

The first session after lunch I was torn between Ann Fleming's "Writing with Style" and Suzanne Adams "Paradigm Shifts When Searching Online Genealogical Records."  Both had great pages in the syllabus.  (And I really appreciate that.  I definitely don't like to see syllabus pages that are in prose or that are double spaced just to take up space.)  I went to the writing session.  I learned that I need to make a style sheet for each project that I am writing and I need to be CONSISTENT.  Even if it's wrong.  Ann also reminded us that even if we intend to write "Just for our family" when it's out of our hands we really don't know where it will be.  I wonder how many authors of family histories knew that there works would be in libraries of various types all over the country. 

My last session today was "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury: The Evidence Presented Clearly Shows..." by Barbara Vines Little.  I've never attended a session of hers.  In fact, I don't know if I ever heard of her or have seen her on another conference schedule.  WELL, NOW when I see her on the schedule I will definitely consider her presentations.  She was great!  Now, this was at the end of the day.  The room was warm.  The room was CROWDED!!  And she's explaining the difference between a list-style proof summary, a narrative-style proof summary and a proof arguments.  I'm quite sure no one went to sleep.  What a lot of information in one short hour.

After a quick dinner I walked to the Cincinnati-Harrison County Library. Wednesday nights it is open until 9 pm.  I know that tomorrow night it will be open for conference attendees until late (11:30 pm) but that's past my bedtime.  I was curious what resources they had that may help me with my research.  I think there were probably 40+ attendees in the genealogy section and as I left at least seven more were entering. 

After walking back to the hotel, instead of writing this blog, or deciding what sessions I want to attend tomorrow, OR indexing, I looked at the catalog for the library and made a list (a long list) of items to look at tomorrow night.  Well, perhaps I'll have to stay up past my bedtime.

Yes.  A great first day at NGS 2012 in Cincinnati.