Israel 2015 – Day 9-10 – IAJGS Day 4-5

Thursday was very busy for my conference schedule. Unfortunately, the sleep deprivation caught up to me. After waking up very early and going to breakfast, I just could not stay awake. I missed the whole morning. I showed up in time for lunch and didn’t go to that either. The only session I went to was the Professionals BOF. A good sized group of us sat around two tables and discussed some interesting issues about running our genealogy businesses. It left me with some things to think about.

I briefly helped Daniel with running around to record some extra sessions by webinar. I don’t know what will happen with those, but since we didn’t have the majority of sessions being recorded, he was catching more of them. This also left me with an advantage. As the IAJGS webmaster, I will have access to all of the recorded and on demand sessions, so I can watch them later after missing them during the week.

I didn’t sign up for a table for the banquet, but I know people. I asked to sit at table 1 and was allowed, but opted for 19 right next to it and sat with Daniel. We’ve had a good time at the banquet before, and since I only see him briefly twice a year during genealogy conferences, I try to spend as much time with him as possible. The entertainment seemed like an odd choice, a barbershop group, but once they got past the usual songs, the others were good. My mind wandered when Dick Eastman was speaking, but I got the bulk of it, and I’d already heard some of his ideas previously in the week.

Friday started too early, as does every day, but instead of jumping up for breakfast, I stayed in bed for a while lomger; it makes me feel like I’ve slept more. I had plenty of time to get to my session. I figured I should webinar myself, but when Daniel didn’t answer, I didn’t. I wasn’t sure how my new presentation would go. I had a much bigger crowd for Search As An Art in the very last time slot of the conference. I felt really good about how it went and I had lots of questions after. That one is definitely a keeper and needs to be expanded on.

Afterwards, I finally got invited to the Shabbat dinner for the IAJGS board and other VIPs that I’d been hearing about. It was really nice and gave us some time to casually chat with each other and the new CEO of FamilySearch.

Edit: This is the peril of writing a blog post late; I forgot some of it. After my session, I went out to Mahane Yehuda Market. It was a madhouse. I mostly just walked through and observed. I ended up walking back to the hotel when I meant to take the light rail. I even ended up going the long way and via Cinema City. I really wanted ice cream, but the place there was already closed.

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