Thursday, June 16, 2011

SCGS Jamboree - Day 1 revisited

Last week I said that I would write in more detail about the Jamboree. On Friday morning the Marriott lobby was full of Geneabloggers meeting each other and renewing previous friendships. It was fun to meet our virtual friends in person and put the names to real faces. The Geneablogger Welcome Bag Team of Amy Coffin, Linda and George Lenertz, Thomas MacEntee, and Joan Miller assembled an awesome collection of goodies. The contributing vendors are: Ancient Faces, Archives.com, Family Chart Masters, Family Roots Travel, FamilySearch, Family Tree Magazine, Family Tree DNA, GeneaBloggers, Genealogy Bank, Genealogy Gems Podcasts, Genealogical Publishing Company, Geni, Heritage Makers, Legacy Family Tree, Light Impressions, My Heritage, National Institute of Genealogical Studies, Maureen Taylor - The Photo Detective, Photos Made Perfect, Roots Magic, WikiTree, and World Vital Records. Whew! I love everything and will enjoy sharing it via the Genealogy Room at our library or as door prizes at our genealogy group monthly meetings. I parked all my stash in my room since it was too much to carry around in addition to my laptop and a 435 page syllabus.

At 1 pm the Jamboree officially opened with a First-Timer Orientation. I skipped that since I was there last year. On Thursday night I had picked the presentations I wanted to attend. A difficult chore since I could only choose 3 of the 30 sessions offered. I tried to select the presentations that were on topics that I was less familiar with.

Friday I attended Thomas MacEntee's session "They're Alive - Searching for Living People" because I felt it would help me with my work on Unclaimed Persons. Thomas discussed various search engines, some of which were new to me. He also talked about using social media and unlikely places such as court records and alumni associations.

My second session was with Drew Smith, of The Genealogy Guys Podcasts, on the topic of Understanding Copyright and Plagiarism. Drew's talk included what can and what cannot be copyrighted and well as what is considered in the public domain. In this era of "copy and paste" the distinction between permission to use and attribution is an important consideration.

The final session I attended on Friday was presented by Stephen Morse, PhD titled "From DNA to Genetic Genealogy: Everything You Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask". Dr Morse is also the creator of the "One Step" site. He gave a very clear presentation covering chromosomes, DNA, genes and defined SNiP and STiR as well as marker and allele. I feel more comfortable with the subject now. This is a pretty new area of genealogy and we are beginning to recognize more inherited traits and medical conditions.

It was truly a mind boggling day and I can only hope that I absorbed all of the useful information that was presented. The day finished with a salad in my room while I decided which of the available 50 seminars I wanted to take. Boo! I could only pick 5!

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