Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog

My schedule for speaking is perfect. I’m always on in the afternoon sessions, 1 p.m. to 4 pm. So technically, all my mornings and evenings are free. But I am going to attend other sessions of interest to me and also make an attempt to talk to as many genealogy people as possible.

My endeavor to get yesterday’s blog post up successfully concluded at about 2 o’clock in the morning. Figuring out the wifi on the ship and getting the pics transferred from my phone to the laptop and even finding a place on the boat with wifi and a standard plug were problematic, but from here on in it should be easier.

As a result of the late evening, I didn’t get to the conference until the 11 am sessions. There were three going on. Carol Baxter was presenting “Tracing your Ancestors in New South Wales” in room 1:

Shauna Hicks was presenting “Victorian Resources for Family History Research” in room 2:

and Neil Bradley was presenting “Tracing your Ancestors in Western Australia” in room 3:

Unfortunately, all my ancestors are from Romania and Ukraine, so these didn’t help me much personally. But the crowd is mostly Australian and was very interested.

In the afternoon, at the 1 pm session, I listened to Jan Gow on using Legacy, titled “Getting to Know Legacy: Just a Storehouse? No Way!!!”.

She had a wonderful presentation that very clearly emphasized the importance of sourcing and the need to make it as simple as possible or you won’t do it.

Next at 2 pm was my presentation on “Genealogy Software – Choosing and Using”.  I didn’t manage to take any pictures of myself presenting, but if I find one on another site, I’ll add a link to it here.

Following my presentation at 3 pm was Bob Velke with his first talk about The Master Genealogist. Bob had sat through my presentation way at the back left of the room, and hopefully enjoyed and agreed with what I had to say. I’ve always thought TMG is one of the most comprehensive genealogy programs available. And Bob had been a very had worker to help try to advance GEDCOM and make data transfer better with his GenBridge process. I had a brief talk with Bob after his session and hope to meet with him for more later on.

At one of the 4 pm sessions, Jill Ball did GeneaGoogling:

… and, of course, outside of the conference we’re also enjoying everything else the ship has to offer.

Today we set sail. Wow!

Prior to supper, we met up with Helen Smith (a genea-blogger) and Alona Tester (also a blogger, and an Unlock the Past employee who is not so secretly the daughter of Alan Phillips). It’s easy to identify each other by the green Clean Cruising lanyard we wear around our necks, which is a different color than all the other passengers have.

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Our Unlock the Past genealogy conference group has its own set of tables assigned for the 6 pm session. Our table includes my wife Cheryl, Ken and Lea Harris of Newcastle, Kerryn Dixon-Ward and her mother Lois of Melbourne, and Lauretta Nobes. Cheryl, Ken and Lois are the non-genealogists at our table who came along for the ride.

At 9 o’clock, we had a greet and meet in our Conference Centre. Most of the group attended. One out of every 20 people on the ship are here for genealogy (or tagging along with someone who is), so the green lanyard is not that uncommon.

Our host Alan Phillips greeted the attendees. Helen Smith and Jill Ball said a few words.

It was nice to meet up with Jan Gow again, who I hadn’t talked to since Roots Tech a year ago in Salt Lake City.

And then the Genea-bloggers who were there got together for a picture. There was Sharon (Fritz) Walker, Alona Tester, Lee-Ann Hamilton, Helen Smith, me, Linda Elliot, Paul Milner and Jill Ball. The one blogger we know is here but is missing from the picture is Shauna Hicks.

So that’s really Day 1 of the cruise, but I’m calling it Day 0 of the Conference, since the Conference program officially begins tomorrow.

We’ve had a great 4 days in Sydney, enjoying summer when it should be winter, enjoying walking around in t-shirts and shorts when it should be parkas and mitts, enjoying sunshine for 14 hours when it should only be daytime for 9, seeing all the mandatory sights of the city, and shopping, shopping, shopping.

Last night, we took the train out to Hornsby, a 45 minute ride Northwest of Sydney. There, Alan Phillips of Gould Genealogy / Unlock the Past were putting on an all-day session for the Hornsby folk.

We had a nice supper there as I joined Jill Ball (on the right, who I previously met at RootsTech last year) and her husband Robert, and Paul Milner (in the white shirt with the tie) and his wife Carol, who we’ll see more of on the cruise over the next 9 days. Also at the table with us were others from the Hornsby genealogy organization who attended the day’s sessions but (so sad for them) will not be joining us on the cruise.

I also briefly met Bob Velke of Wholly Genes (TMG) who didn’t stay for supper, but who will be on the cruise.

Earlier in the day, my wife Cheryl and I were exploring The Rocks. To our delight, our ship had already docked and we got a great look at what we are about to embark on in a few hours.

Voyager of the Seas was the largest ship in the world when it was constructed in 1999 and is the largest ship every to dock in Australia.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to blog a little about the Conference during the cruise if internet connections permit.

Now off to the ship!