I seem to post a lot of articles like this one: I will be traveling for the next week and a half. This time I am going to attend the GOONS conference in Warrington, Cheshire, England, and will follow that with a few days of "mini-vacation" as an American tourist in England. Of course, all this assumes that the British Airways employees do not go on strike as they have threatened. The latest strike news may be found at http://goo.gl/pbKNv. I will be keeping a close eye on that URL since both my flight to England and the return flight are scheduled on British Airways.
While I will be carrying an assortment of laptop computers, wi-fi and 3G networking equipment, plus a cell phone that also acts as a wireless modem, there is a chance that hardware malfunctions could stop the posting of new articles to this newsletter.
Since I will be busy 12 hours a day or more while at the conference plus traveling the other days while in England, there may be some impact on the number of new articles published in this newsletter in the next week and a half. However, I hope to write about happenings at the conference and probably will post a few pictures as well.
After an overnight stop at a hotel near London's Heathrow Airport, I will take a train to Warrington, Cheshire, where I have been invited to speak at the annual conference of the Guild of One-Name Studies, affectionately known as GOONS. This is the world's leading organisation for one-name studies. A one-name study is a project researching facts about a surname and all the people who have held it, as opposed to a particular pedigree (the ancestors of one person) or descendancy (the descendants of one person or couple). These folks are serious genealogists but typically concentrate on specific surnames rather than researching only their own ancestry. Of course, some GOONS members do both. While based in Britain, the Guild has members all over the world and is widely recognised as a centre of excellence in one-name studies. Currently, over 2,300 people have registered over 7,850 study surnames with GOONS.
You can read more about GOONS at http://www.one-name.org/ and you can view the conference schedule at http://www.one-name.org/Conf2011_Warrington.html.
After the GOONS conference, I will wend my way back to London, taking several days to stop and see various cities along the way. I always enjoy travel in England and expect this trip to be no exception. I do expect to post occasional articles while traveling, but the volume of such articles may be reduced.
As to next week's Plus Edition newsletter: I am not sure where I will be on Sunday evening nor what sort of Internet connectivity I will have, if any. Therefore, the scheduled Plus Edition mailing for April 17 might be delayed a bit.
So, I'm off. Cheerio!
