Mom & I didn’t get the earliest start this morning so we missed the Keynote, but I heard it was good. For those who are just joining the posts on the Expo, I’m bringing my Mom along as a bit of a distraction for her and, while she finds family history interesting—especially the stories that result from the research, she hasn’t ever done any herself. So, with that in mind, we dived right in.

Naming Patterns of American Families, Arlene Eakle

I have to admit, I felt kind of like I’d walked into the middle of a talk. Arlene is an engaging speaker and even in my not-quite-enough-tea-in-me-to-be-awake state I was picking out nuggets of information. But she kept referring back to the syllabus and since I, and most of the folks in the room, had the CD version, it was a bit like trying to follow a map that was still half folded. I’m hoping that when I have time to dig into it, some will make more sense.

Mom enjoyed it, but said she got lost pretty quick.

Nugget: That there is much more variation in naming patterns, both for given names and surnames, between cultures then I thought there was and I need to learn more about them for my Irish (or are they Scottish?) ancestors especially. And I hope I don’t come across Welsh ancestors because those naming patterns sound heinous!

Family History Books: Editing, Design & Publishing, Nancy & Biff Barnes

(@STTBooks)

My first choice for this time period was on organizing, but it got cancelled, so I popped into this one next door. Now, in interest of full disclosure, my non-genealogy professional hat is publishing, so I always like to see what others are doing in that area. And Nancy and Biff gave a very nice presentation and I hope to get by their booth tomorrow and see more of their offerings.

They had very sound advice about getting started (set a date for yourself to finish), making a plan (I’d call that an outline), and getting it done even if you’re not a writer (tape yourself telling the story and transcribe).

Mom thought it was sorta interesting but mostly that the room was cold. She did gasp at the cost of some of the software mentioned (Illustrator & Photoshop) and I later let her know that it can be procured for a less then the street price quoted.

Nugget(s): Writing a family history is for preservation and sharing of information. Tell the stories and share the pictures. And don’t forget to write YOUR stories; you are an ancestor too. Lastly, if you can only hire an editor for one part, make it the content editor.

Twitter: It’ Not Just “What I Had For Breakfast” Anymore, Thomas MacEntee

(@tmacentee, @geneabloggers)

Well, I took a wee break in the middle of the day but managed to get to Thomas’s talk to wrap up the day. Mom was still wiped and sat this one out (it’s computers you know). I think lots of folks were taking it easy as we had a small class but that made for a very informal feel and there was a good amount of time for questions.

Thomas did a good job talking about what Twitter is, and isn’t. And I liked the way he incorporated example tweets into his slides. He also jumped from the slides to the Twitter web interface and Tweetdeck (his app viewer of choice and mine too) to show real-time examples of tweets.

Nugget(s): Reinforced my feelings about using Twitter as another tool to connect with genealogy folks and that’s really all it is: a new tool for doing what we’ve always done. Hoping to have that info on tweeting to a list from Thomas, but the more I think about it they really are an organizing tool for incoming information more than for outgoing. Still means I need to clean mine up though. Looking forward to checking out the links he has in the syllabus.

For more info on this presentation from Thomas himself, check out his presentation summary.

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