Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog

After 3 wonderful weeks down south of the equator for the first time, across the international date line for the first time, and enjoying summer and days longer than 12 hours in February for the first time, after a total of 18 gruelling hours in the air, I’m back home again. Despite returning to snow on the ground and below zero temperatures, it does feel good to be home.

I loved our stay in Sydney. It is a teeming megalopolis.City Centre is bustling with people and traffic everywhere. Thousands of stores and businesses and eateries within a few blocks of our hotel. The transportation infrastructure with its trains, subways, buses, taxis, monorail (to be closed this summer, so sad), walkways, bike paths, freeways, tunnels, parkways and ferries is head-spinning. We did all the touristy things, and the highlights included petting a koala at the Featherdale Wildlife Park and watching the surf at Manly beach as it grew from 1 meter waves in the afternoon to 2.5 meter waves in the evening. Despite all the warnings about Sydney being expensive, we didn’t find prices to be outlandish. The rest of the world is catching up and paying $500 K to $1 M for a home is becoming the norm everywhere.

The cruise was of course the center attraction. Mixing genealogy with pleasure was the greatest combination. The 145 people on the genealogy cruise all had the time of our lives, and we became great friends with our tablemates Ken and Lea, Loretta, Kerryn and Lois and our theatre-mates Ken and Barbara.

Now to sort through 2000 emails, 100 RSS feeds, 50 letters (snail mail), call and visit family, 3 weeks of newspapers and organize my 2000 photos and videos and a hundred leaflets from the trip, and I’ll be back rolling again.

The last day of our onboard genealogy conference.

I woke up early, and went to the top deck of the ship and did what I call the Voyager of the Seas marathon. I went through all the decks and all the public spaces, both inside and outside, starting with decks 13, 14 and 15 and working my way down to deck 1. It took 95 minutes. I estimated I covered 9 km and even discovered a few nooks and crannies I didn’t know about in all the previous days on the ship.

At 1 pm was Jan Gow on “Delving Deep in FamilySearch: Let’s Forget About the Old – On With the New”

At 2 pm, I was part of a Social Media Panel with Shauna Hicks, Alona Tester, Helen Smith and was moderated by Jill Ball. There were 7 questions. 1. Your favorite social media tool (My blog). 2. How do you use social media to further your business. (My mailing list and forum). 3. Advice to a newbie. (For genealogy social media – try Google+, which got Jill jumping up and down in support of that). 4. What aspect of Social Media makes you grit your teeth (How to use all the venues without repeating yourself). 5. How does it help with your genealogical development (I follow blogs of those who are technical genealogists). 6. How do you fit social media time into your busy day (RSS feeds help save a lot of time). 7. How social media enabled you to connect to a relation or fellow researcher (Social media hasn’t but my Family Research page has).

At 3 pm, I gave my lighthearted presentation on “Why Genealogy is Everyone’s Solemn Duty”.

At 4 pm, Stephen Dando-Collins presented “Captain Bligh’s Other Mutiny and Pasteur’s Gambit”.

We went to our dining room (at 1,600 seats on three floors, it was the largest dining room in Australasia) for the last time.

In the evening we got together back in the Conference room for our Prize Draws and Windup. I gave away two copies of Behold.

Various groups of us got together for pictures. The shot below is of all the geneabloggers.

Thus endeth a wonderfully successful conference, and an amazing cruise.

Post mortem: My presentations will be available for a short time on my SkyDrive at: http://sdrv.ms/XZJKN2 – Note that I did tell some people that www before the sdrv.ms might work, but it looks like it won’t. You have to leave the www off.

Here’s a few quotes from the conference that I had noted:

A lovely cause of death from a document in one of Paul Milner’s presentations: “gradual decay of the powers of life”.

Bob Velke describing the flexibility of his program TMG:  “I give you enough rope to hang yourself.”

Jan Gow on how genealogists do their cleaning. “They sweep the room with a glance,”

Today, I’m writing this from Sydney, the day after we disembarked. What are the odds that our Blue Mountains tour would include a stop at Featherdale Wildlife Park where my wife and I would run into Bob Velke and his wife? That was a Tasmanian devil of a thing to happen.

At 9 am, Paul Milner’s talk was about “Occupation and Guild Records”.

Paul always talked to a room-full of interested listeners.

At 10 am, we all (145 of us) assembled on the majestic staircase of our ship’s main dining room for a group picture. Below is a picture of the proof, since I don’t have my scanner here with me. Unfortunately, I came from the 4th floor and got caught up at the top of the stairs on the left for the picture, and couldn’t get into a better spot.

After the group picture, they got the organizers and speakers to get together for a picture. We had about 80 people of our groups photographing us for about 5 minutes. You’ll find that picture up on Jill Ball’s Geniaus blog post titled A Canister of Genealogy Speakers,

At 1 pm, I gave my talk about “Using Life Events and Ages to Solve Genealogical Information”.

At 2 pm, Diane Foster, the only other Canadian in our group, presented “Genealogy and Family History, What is the Difference?”

At 4 pm, I gave my 6th presentation: “Warning! Data won’t transfer: GEDCOM Transfers.”

It hasn’t been all genealogy for me. My wife and I have also been enjoying everything the cruise has to offer.

The shows:

The sun:

and the sumptuous delights: