When you want something done, ask a busy person…. well, this person is pretty darned busy already, thank you! Over the years, I have given many thousands of hours back to the genealogy and history communities, volunteering in various roles from committee member to Chair/Chairman and many other things in between. This weekend saw the second annual conference of The Surname Society…. an international society for those interested in researching a particular name/s and collecting data on either a regional, national or worldwide level. To ensure that all society members could access the conference lectures and AGM (either in real-time or at their leisure after the event), we were delighted to (once again) be supported by Legacy (this time in the form of Marian Pierre-Louis)…. without their technical wizardry, we would be lost!
The conference lectures were delivered by a world-class field of experts including Peggy Clemens Lauritzen, Dr Janet Few, Dr Martin Blythe of Living DNA, Ruth Blair and Helen Smith. Lectures are only available free for conference attendees (i.e. society members) although most will also be made available (for a fee) from the Legacy Webinar Library. I am pretty certain that we may have broken a world record for the most concise/efficient AGM in history for a genealogy society. Fifteen minutes….! A great day spent in front of the computer and so lovely not to have to pack up and then have an enormously long drive home after the conference was over.
Today was time for family time for the most part. A birthday tomorrow (not allowed to say who!) and so the FWL Wimborne Office and FWL HQ combined to visit Boscombe Down Aviation Collection and then partake of a bite to eat together for lunch. The collection is full of history (right up my street) and the gentleman volunteer who was wandering about could quite easily have been on Mastermind with his specialist subject being the collection itself! There were many restorations under way and also smaller craft stored in the hanger, as well as two cars …. not sure how they fitted into proceedings!
Having visited the Helicopter Museum in Weston-super-Mare and also the Tank Museum in Bovington in the last year, anyone would think we were able to take time off….! Well we can, so long as there is a history-based visit scheduled!
