What? It's Over?

On what would normally be the last day of the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree, I'll already be on the road, headed home. This year has seen a restructuring of the normal Jamboree fare, with not only a Writers' track added concurrently with the DNA Day, but the shortening of the sequence by one day. The SCGS is responsive to conference attendee feedback, and apparently many people voiced the desire to use Sunday as a travel day to return home before the start of the work week. I know I always did—and missed about half of the Sunday sessions. After all, a six to eight hour drive (usually eight, thanks to weekender traffic headed north again) calls for some kind of drastic measures if we don't want to roll in the driveway back home past midnight.

What was good about Jamboree this year was the great array of speakers, with the sparkling jewel on top being the banquet presentation by Diahan Southard of Your DNA Guide. Connections in and around the exhibit hall also seemed to be more beneficial than usual, this year. My one-on-one discussions with conference speakers turned out to be more tech-related than in past years, but necessary; stuff happens and sometimes, a face-to-face problem solving session goes light years beyond what can happen through an online chat with support services.

Stuff like that can happen at genealogy conferences, where events are big enough to garner top speakers but small enough to reach out and talk with specific ones during the ample breaks. The networking opportunities seem to have improved over the years—or is it just that familiar faces have morphed into friends with the passing of time and the return, year after year, of the regulars?

While the weekend was wonderful, one little detail still remains: I have yet to gather the data for my biweekly recap of research progress. Of course, missing half the week for an event as monumental as Jamboree will have an impact on that count. We'll see how that count turns out, tomorrow, after my return back home to a regular schedule again.

One thing is certain, though: next year is the SCGS Jamboree fiftieth anniversary celebration, so along with CeCe Moore, Judy Russell and D. Joshua Taylor, I'll be sure to be back in 2019.