Monday, August 1, 2011

Musings On A Munday Midwest Family History Expo

Once again I attended the Midwest Family History Expo and truly enjoyed myself.  This conference did not disappoint when it came to engaging and educational workshop sessions.  I left with a 266 page syllabus, pages and pages of notes and am excited to put what I learned into practice.  I liked the conference theme "Where Ol' Dogs Learn New Tricks!"  We can all fall into that category no matter where we are in the leaning process.  No matter how long we've been researching, you don't know what you don't know. That's the beauty of the Family History Expo, we can learn from the speakers as well as from the other attendees and move our research along while feeding off each others energy and passion for genealogy.

As with most genealogy conferences, simply deciding which session to attend is challenging.  I attended a total of eight sessions over the two days of the expo as well as the keynote address given by Lisa Louise Cooke, the Friday night dinner presentation with M. Bridget Cook (no relation) and made several passes through a busy exhibit hall.

The highlight of the expo for me was meeting and learning from Lisa Louise Cooke.  I've been a faithful listener of the Genealogy Gems Podcast for several years and was looking forward to soaking up all the gems in person.  She did not disappoint.  From the Google search strategies, to map searches to creating a family history tour in Google Earth I was hooked.  I am looking forward to getting started on recording my own family history tour and sharing it with the non-genealogists in my family.  I do need to brush up on some of the techniques she shared with us and I think I have just the reference guide to help me!  (it's even signed by the author!)

I hope there is a Family History Expo in your area that you will be able to attend in the near future. The value is hard to beat and the Expos truly are created by wonderful people who love genealogy.  I also hope that the Midwest Expo is here to stay!

3 comments:

  1. It was great, wasn't it!! I also enjoyed myself and picked up a few new tricks. I spent last night customizing my Google dashboard into a timesaving set of genealogy resources at my fingertips. I've played around a little bit with Google Earth but it's still kind of scary at this point. Thanks again for being such great company at the conference!

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  2. Sounds like a rewarding weekend! Lucky you.

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  3. It was a great learning event. I can't wait to start going through the syllabus...in my spare? time! :)

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