Day 4 Re-cap #NGS2014Gen

I can’t believe NGS is over.  I also can’t believe that I lasted for four days without keeling over at some point!  What an amazing experience, and here is the day 4 re-cap.

Saturday was great since my oldest son was able to attend with me.  He went to the youth camp that morning and said he had a great time.  They learned about basic genealogy, attended Tammy Hepp’s lecture, toured the exhibit hall, and then took a spin on the computers at the Ancestry.com booth.  When I picked him up at the end of the session he was excited to tell me all about the discoveries he made on the computer.  Awesome huh?!  I successfully suppressed the urge to tell him I knew it all and encouraged him to keep looking.

I attended three great lectures Saturday. First of the day was “Images You Can Freely Use” by Judy Russell.  Yes two lectures in two days by the Legal Genealogist.  Once again a lot of great advice on copyright, public domain, and places to find images you can use for free in your publications.  Always good things to know and lessons I will be using in the near future.  Tip: use pictures you take as much as possible since you own the copyright from the moment of creation and there is no need to ask permission!

In the afternoon my son and I attended 2 lectures together.  The first one was about researching in European records by John Colletta.  Always a fantastic speaker and once again (just like FGS last August) he even caught and kept my sons attention.  After that we sat with our local genealogy friends for the Elizabeth Shown Mills lecture on “7 Ways to Jumpstart Your Research.”  She was very entertaining and had the kid laughing out loud at some points.

However, the highlight of the day was when I was visiting with Jen Baldwin at the FindMyPast booth.  We were talking to the boyo about his morning and decided to show him some other “cool” records.  He thought it was awesome, and, much to my pleasure, we may have broken down a brick wall.  I have to research the lead a bit more, and tell my mother-in-law what I found, but it may answer some questions about her Welsh family.  I will be putting my 30 day free trial to good use I think.

Saturday also was my big shopping day.  It takes me a few days to make decisions on what I really need, want, and can afford when it comes to genealogy books.  I did pick up a few that I think will come in handy with my research and interests.   

Cavaliers and Pioneers vols 4-8 (at some point I will need to get 1-3)

Jamestowne Ancestors

German Genealogy Guide (signed, woohooo!)

Reading Early American Handwriting

A CD of the Magazine of Virginia vols 1-50

Lastly, I learned that I came in 6^th for the live tweet challenge at the conference.  How did I find out? By seeing Josh Taylor’s tweet!  Jen Baldwin came in first, but she is a tweet monkey.  I ran into tech issues (like batteries dying and no cell signal in some rooms) so I am happy with where I fell.  It was cool to be listed with others I knew in the top 10. Guess I will have to pay for my registration for NGS 2015.

Now, time to decompress, reflect, and get back to work.  It is a new day and a new work week tomorrow.  I have lots to do!