NGS Conference in Kansas City is a Success

I got home late last night from the four-day conference held by the U.S. National Genealogical Society, co-sponsored by the Missouri State Genealogical Association, the Mid-Continent Public Library, the Northland Genealogical Society, the APG (Association of Professional Genealogists) Heartland Chapter, and the Johnson County, Kansas, Genealogical Society. It must have been a good conference as I am exhausted. I slept on the plane ride home and I slept today. That's my yardstick for measuring a conference's success!

The conference in Kansas City was held under sunny skies the entire time. Not that the weather mattered very much; most of the attendees never ventured outside. Those of us who stayed at the conference hotel were able to attend all the lectures and sessions, the Exhibitors' Hall and several restaurants without leaving the hotel. In addition, an elevated pedestrian tunnel connects the conference hotel with another nearby hotel and restaurants as well as a small shopping center with even more restaurants. It was a perfect location for a major conference.

I wrote earlier about the first day of the conference. I can now report that the following three days were about the same: sessions and presentations from 8:00 AM until into the evening, sponsored luncheons and more.

Here are a few of the things I noticed:

FamilySearch (the organization owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and FamilyLink announced a new partnership that will create a new and significantly improved card catalog for the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, the many local Family History Centers around the world, and individuals in their homes. The new catalog will contain all of the entries in the present catalog plus millions of new entries that will point to available digital sources. In most cases, those will be online images of original records. You can read more in my earlier report at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/05/day-1-of-ngs-co.html.

Incline Software demonstrated the next release of Ancestral Quest, a genealogy program for Windows. The new version will be ready for shipment later this summer and will include integration with New FamilySearch. The software installed in your PC will have the capability to search through roughly 1/2 billion records already in New FamilySearch, a number that is growing constantly. The software can find matches for people already in your database and then (optionally) import data from New FamilySearch or export your data TO New Family Search. Best of all, it does this one individual at a time, only after you examine each record and agree. In my mind, this is the only method to import or export data to online databases: one individual at a time. There should be no mass import or exports of hundreds of individuals, along with hundreds or thousand of errors. The AncestralQuest method only exchanges data after a careful human review and analysis of each record.

Perhaps the best thing of all is that Ancestral Quest uses standard Personal Ancestral File databases. You can open and use the one database in either Personal Ancestral File or in AncestrralQuest. Keep in mind that Personal Ancestral File, or PAF, is a "dead program:" it hasn't been updated in ages and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a long time ago that they will not update it ever again. PAF users can use AncestralQuest to perform functions not found in PAF, such as the interface with New FamilySearch, then switch back to PAF again for every-day work. However, I bet that most PAF users who do that will soon switch permanently to AncestralQuest in order to use its many advanced features.

Jim Killeen was mentioned in many news services a few weeks ago. Like many people, he searched for his own name on Google. He found several men of the same name. They included a cop, a swinger, an Irish priest, an engineer, a father of eight, an Aussie and a gambler. He then traveled the world to meet the men with whom he shared the name. Best of all, the Irish priest Jim Killeen is an Irish priest in the city where (Los Angeles) Jim Killeen's ancestors departed Ireland. (Los Angeles) Jim then brought all of the men to the United States to a meeting in Killeen (naturally!), Texas. Jim created a DVD about the experience. Jim (the one from Los Angeles) had a booth in the NGS Exhibitors Hall and was selling copies of his DVD. Here's a hint: you can see the same one-hour+ DVD for the next few days at http://www.youtube.com/v/SSAloy8LV7E&hl=en. It's a great video. It will be removed before long, however, so look for it now.

Attention New England researchers: Genealogical Publishing Company is now selling a printed "Females Index" to "Savage's Genealogical Dictionary of the Early Settlers of New England." If you have the original four volumes of this classic, you need the brand-new Females Index!

My Ancestors Found announced a new “Family History Phonebook.” It is a downloadable file that will list conferences and seminars, libraries, archives, media and publishing, retail and wholesale distributors, software solutions, web sites, support groups and more. You can read more in my earlier report at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/05/day-1-of-ngs-co.html.

I will also write future newsletter articles about some other things that I saw, including a nifty scanner that converts both microfilm and microfiche to scanned digital images.

Recently-retired Halvor Moorshead was seen wandering the conference with a big smile on his face. Until a few weeks ago, Halvor was CEO of Moorshead Publications, publishers of Family Chronicle magazine, History magazine, Internet Genealogy magazine, Discovering Family History magazine and numerous books. Halvor recently retired and sold the business to two employees: Ed Zapletal and Rick Cree. (See my earlier article at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/02/halvor-moorshea.html for details.) Halvor now plans to enjoy his retirement by occasionally lecturing at occasional conferences. In fact, I expect to see him in two weeks at the Ontario Genealogical Society's annual conference in London, Ontario. A dinner was held on Thursday evening in Halvor's honor.

More than 100 presentations were made, covering a wide variety of genealogy-related topics, including several at various lunches. You can see the complete list at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/2008NGSRegistrationbrochure.pdf.

If I may offer a bit of shameless self-promotion, I will mention that I had the honor of speaking at the GENTECH luncheon at this year's NGS conference. I spoke on "New Partnerships in the Genealogical Community: The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown." The folks in the audience seemed to enjoyed it.

The NGS conference ended on Saturday with the society's annual meeting. President Jan Alpert was all smiles as she presided at the meeting. She knew that it had been a successful conference.

I believe the 2008 NGS conference in Kansas City was a success and I also suspect that the roughly 1,600 attendees would agree.

Would you like to attend a national conference of the National Genealogical Conference? The 2009 conference will be held 13-16 May 2009 in Raleigh, North Carolina and the 2010 conference will be held 28 April through 1 May, 2010 in Salt Lake City.

See you there!

Comments

[Mary Beth]

Dick, It was a pleasure to sit next to you at Thu's luncheon. Also glad to hear that someone else was also exhausted. I walked around in a fog all day Sun/Mon and thought I was just getting decrepit, but you're younger than I am so it was just the excitement and wall-to-wall events/exhibits/chats with other attendees that did me in. Am anxious to read about the scanner you mention. At NARA on Fri, I sat across from someone with a scanner that was just a bit larger than letter-sized paper, about an inch thick and with a glass bottom. It looked like the owner was scanning fiches. I didn't want to disturb him -- we were all pressed for time. Might be the same scanner you mention so I look forward to your review. Hope to see you soon at another convention. In the meantime,I'll try to think up a good answer to your question about how to improve such conferences. It was all-around great so that might be a tough task.

Mary Beth

[Sue M.]

Dick, the conference was indeed excellent. However, where were the restaurants that you said were available at the hotel? On Friday and Saturday nights the restaurant on the mezzanine closed, so we had only the Sports
Bar with a limited menus available--unless we chose to dine at the pricey restaurant nextdoor to the Sports
Bar, where entrees alone averaged $47.00. Needless to say, most genealogists stuck with the Sports Bar. Again, the conference lived up to expectationsw.

[Dick Eastman]

---> However, where were the restaurants that you said were available at the hotel?

I ate two different nights at the Spectator's Bar and Grille sports bar on the mezzanine which I believe was open every night. I rather enjoyed the food at the sports bar and would be quite willing to eat there again.

I ate one night in the Peppercorn Duck Club on the mezzanine which was a bit expensive. I don't think I would return there. I am told that the Skies Rooftop Revolving Restaurant was open every evening although I never ate there. I never did check out the Milano Italian Restaurant and don't know if they were open or not.

Two nights I walked through the tunnel to an adjacent hotel/shopping plaza that had another 8 or 10 restaurants open. Technically, those restaurants were not in the hotel but were less than a ten-minute walk away without going outside. Prices varied from fast food to expensive. The highest-priced item on the menu at the "Streetcar Named Desire" restaurant was $8.00. I ate there twice.

- Dick Eastman

[Lori Bessler]

I realize that you just mentioned the scanning equipment in passing and that you say you will write about it later. I am really wondering if the equipment is the ST200 or the Scan Pro 1000? As a librarian, I have opinions on both.

[Tracy Ellis]

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the NGS conference on Friday and Saturday. I thought the sessions were very informative and fun. I got to visit with cousins that I had never met before (just e-mailed back and forth). Everyone that I spoke with indicated that they were having a very good time. I am glad that I got to participate in a conference relatively close to home-- I live in Oklahoma. My pet peeve, though, would be the vendors hours. I wish they would open a little earlier in the morning (before classes) and stay open a little longer at the end of the day. I know they are tired and ready to go to dinner or get home, but on Saturday most of the vendors were closed by 2 p.m. I would have purchased more from them given the opportunity. Thanks for the great blog, Dick.

[Carol]

Tracy,

The vendors don't get to set their own hours. The conference organizers decide on the hours, and then inform the vendors what those hours are. So, you should email the NGS folks and let them know. Most of the vendors would be happy to have more accesible hours.