I was looking forward to today as I was meeting up with some of my fellow IHGS students. They are a bit further along in the course than me, and as hoped, I am now all fired up to crack on with my next assignments!
However, on with the event – I got some extra workshop tickets today, and the first talk I attended was Audrey Collins’ on TNA’s new Discovery service. Despite numerous technical glitches, it was an interesting and useful presentation. Looking forward to getting back to my laptop and doing some searches.
Next up was a comparison of parish registers and bishops’ transcripts in Wiltshire from John Hurley. I’m about to tackle these in my next IHGS assignments, so good timing!
Yesterday I spent some time going around the different stands downstairs, but today decided to mainly spend my time at the workshops instead. I bought a ticket for the keynote talk with Laurence Harris (unfortunately forgoing Bruce Durie’s presentation on Heraldry), and was a bit disappointed – not sure what I had expected, though. Perhaps something pitched at a slightly higher level? The Q & A session that followed was great, however.
Panel participants included Laurence (myHeritage),
D.Joshua Taylor (brightsolid US), Dan Lynch (Google), Lisa Louise Cook (Genealogy Gems), Peter Christian, and Paul Howes (Guild of One Name Studies).
And then for a bit of light relief (and some excellent info), there was Chris Paton on doing Irish research online. Great craic altogether!
I had an Ask the Expert session booked after this – I got some useful guidance on where to go next in the hunt for my Burkes in Mayo, but I wonder if I might not have come up with it myself given half a spare moment. Always nice to have someone’s undivided attention for 20 whole minutes, though (not something I’m used to with three young kids).
By this time I was in WDYTYA Live overload. Had a quick covetous look at the Flip-pal, and then legged it to the pub.