Opening Day is done...

What a day! I was up and out earlier than a regular workday! But it was good.

It was a great walk to the Hyatt. The hard part is walking back up the hill.

The conference got off to a great start. After all the preliminaries, the keynote address about immigrants coming to Missouri was good. It was interesting how the waves of people came to the Midwest.

The exhibit hall opened at 9:30, and the sessions ceased until 11:00 to let all the attendees peruse the booths. There wasn't as much for sale as there was in Chicago in 2006. Not a lot of freebie novelties either. I didn't find anything to buy. I spoke to a lot of the vendors, but nothing caught my eye.

The 11:00 session was What's New at Ancestry.com. Wow...they really have added some great search capabilities. I'll have to really get on it and dig. If you contribute your tree(s), they will see all the records for matches on any member of the tree.

Lunch was a pita supreme pizza. Wasn't bad. Went to the Crown Center Mall.

The afternoon was dedicated to Homestead learning. There is a Homestead Memorial historic site in Beatrice Nebraska. They are trying to get all homestead docs imaged and stored there. My O'Malley's were supposed to have Homestead land in Kansas, but they were there in 1860 and Homestead didn't start until Jan 1 1863. I have to write to the BLM office in New Mexico for Kansas information.

I was going to go to the ballgame tonight, but decided against it. I stuck around here and watched it on TV.

Tomorrow the schedule is:

8:00 am GenSmarts (an artificial intelligence software to give you tips on blanks in your tree)
9:30 am Options in Post-Adoption Research
11:00 am Out of the Ashes--Irish Genealogical Collection
2:30 pm British Isles Internet Strategies I - General and England
4:00 pm British Isles Internet Strategies II - Scotland, Ireland and Wales

And I am still planning on getting a good steak from Hereford tomorrow too.

Glad I've gotten some comments in my email.

Well, I'm going to get some sleep. Hope you have a great day!

Mark