Now is the time to mark your calendar for a great genealogy conference to be held in a sunny location. About two months from now, hundreds of genealogists, perhaps more than one thousand, will assemble in the "snowbird" town of St. George, Utah, for the Genealogy and Family Heritage Jamboree.
This year's event will be held at the Dixie Convention Center on February 10 and 11 (Friday and Saturday). It is sponsored by My Ancestors with a lot of help from volunteers from the Washington County PAF User's Group.
This two-day event will draw speakers and vendors from all over the U.S. It will feature 101 classes in two simultaneous tracks plus more than 60 vendors and exhibitors displaying all the latest genealogy products and technology.
When I looked down the list of speakers, I noticed many names mentioned frequently in past issues of this newsletter: Geoff Rassmussen, Bruce Buzbee, Robert Booth, Holly Hansen, Sharon Sergeant, Arlene H Eakle, Stephen Valentine, Karen Clifford, Bill Dollarhide, Leland K Meitzler, Gaylon Findlay, Paul Nauta, Dennis Meldrum and many others. Oh yes, some guy named Dick Eastman will also be speaking on "Gadgets for Genealogists." You can read a complete list of all the speakers and their 101 topics at http://www.myancestorsfound.com/jamboree/classes.htm
DearMYRTLE will be the keynote speaker. "Myrt" is the author of The Everything Online Genealogy Book, and host of DearMYRTLE's Family History Hour Internet radio show. You can visit her web site at http://www.dearmyrtle.com.
The Friday evening after-dinner speaker will be the same Dick Eastman mentioned earlier. I plan to speak on a topic that I have never talked about in past presentations and have not yet written about in this newsletter.
The list of exhibitors at this conference also reads like a "Who's Who in Genealogy." The companies represented include My Ancestors, the BYU Center for Family History & Genealogy, Genealogy Today, Legacy Family Tree (Millennia Corporation), the Utah State Archives, the Genealogical Institute, Computer Genealogy Specialists, the BYU Independent Study program, FamilySearch.org, the Jefferson Project, Heritage Creations, Everton Publishing, the Godfrey Memorial Library, Goldbug, RootsMagic, Genealogy Research Associates, Relative Genetics, DearMYRTLE, Incline Software, the Utah Cemetery Project, AncestralManor, Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, and many more. A complete list of all the vendors is available at http://www.myancestorsfound.com/jamboree/exhibit.htm
A note to potential vendors: you will note that the map at http://www.myancestorsfound.com/jamboree/exhibit.htm is almost fully booked. If you want to exhibit at this conference, you need to book your space immediately.
Unlike most of the larger genealogy conferences held in other cities, admission fees at the Genealogy and Family Heritage Jamboree are rather modest: only $45 for the two days. However, if you register before December 31st, you can obtain the Early Bird Special discount for only $35.
Another feature that I applaud is that the conference syllabus is being produced on CD-ROM. This is obviously cheaper and also much easier to carry and to pack in the suitcase for the trip home. I wish that all genealogy conferences would do the same!
A monthly newsletter is available for those planning to attend or to anyone with an interest in the conference. To subscribe, send an email to news@myancestorsfound.com with the word "subscribe" in the subject line. To unsubscribe, send an email with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
St. George is an excellent place to hold a mid-winter conference. It is in the southwest corner of Utah, only six miles from the Arizona state line and not too far from Nevada. Its year-round population of about 50,000 swells considerably in the winter months as many "snowbirds" move to St. George to escape the cold weather. The winter daytime high temperatures in St. George range from the mid-fifties to mid-sixties. I think that is perfect weather in which to hold a genealogy conference.
While St. George is in the state of Utah, anyone flying to the conference is advised to travel to Las Vegas, not to Salt Lake City. St. George is about a two-hour drive from Las Vegas but a six-hour drive from Salt Lake City.
Last year's Genealogy and Family Heritage Jamboree in St. George attracted hundreds of attendees, and this year's event already has already had more publicity than last year's event. I suspect this February conference in the small town in southwestern Utah will be one of the five or six largest genealogy conferences of the year in North America.
Will I see you there?
For more information about the Genealogy and Family Heritage Jamboree in St. George, Utah, look at http://www.myancestorsfound.com/jamboree/jamboree.htm.
