Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Saturday, January 23, 2010

A great experience at the Arizona Family History Expo

Despite a huge rainstorm and actual tornado warnings, the Arizona Family History Expo was a huge success. I was invited to attend as a Blogger and had a excellent time meeting other Bloggers and talking to the exhibitors and attendees. Although I have not heard any official attendance figures, I would assume there were at least twice as many people there, than last year. I hope they didn't come expecting the usual Mesa, Arizona really nice weather in January because we had a very large rain storm most of Thursday and Friday. I understand a lot of travelers had a hard time reaching the Valley.

I was uniformly impressed with the presentations. They were all excellent. The vendors worked hard and had good booths to visit. Because of my background in computers, I have worked tradeshows before, from the vendor side, and understand the amount of effort and organization it takes to spend two or three days standing on your feet talking to people. Because of this, the vendors always have my sympathy.

During the next few posts, I will be featuring new items that caught my eye at the Expo. So far, I have managed to control my urge to purchase everything in sight, but I do have some items I probably can't live without.

Thanks to all the kind vendors who talked to me. Thanks to Holly Hansen and her able crew from Family History Expos for putting on a really good show. It was interesting to see the show from a quasi-insider view as a Blogger. I did manage to send off a number of Tweets, but my AT&T card would not work with my computer, and even my iPhone would not work well from within the Mesa Convention Center. We did have a complimentary wifi connection but that didn't work that well with my computer either. I didn't appear to me that the other Bloggers were having the same trouble. Oh well.

1 comment:

  1. Hello James: I was one of your dinner companions at the Family History Expo banquet. That was a very nice evening. I appreciate your advice on software usage, researching and blogging. The expo was a fantastic chance to learn. The sessions I attended motivated me toward my own genealogy blog, better research logs, new ways of researching, etc, etc, etc. Thanks again for your advice.
    Nancy Hurley

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