California Family History Expo, Part 2

The first day of the California Family History Expo started with a 6:00am hotel pick up from the Family History Expos crew. The business of genealogy is not glamorous, my friends, but it sure is fun.

I was at the Expo venue before the sun came up. I did some last-minute stuffing of the bags. Each attendee got one. It included information, vendor news and a CD syllabus of the event. I also took a few pre-Expo photos.

Once it became Expo time, I tested the wi-fi situation and made sure it was set up for the Bloggers of Honor.

At 9:30am, I led a Q&A session on social media tools. Most of the questions were about Facebook. Most of the attendees had Facebook accounts, but weren't quite sure what to do with them. It was very rewarding to help them figure out how to use Facebook for genealogy. I don't have to remind you that Family History Expos has their own Facebook page, because I know you're all friends of it, right?

The rest of the morning, I monitored and updated the Family History Expos Twitter account. I scheduled tweets to go out at regular intervals during the day and kept tabs on what was being said about the Expo through the #fhexpo Twitter hashtag. I greeted Bloggers of Honor as they arrived and made sure they had what they needed to enjoy themselves. I visited with friends.

In the afternoon, I led a second social media Q&A. I also took photos of the Expo events and uploaded them to the Family History Expos photo album for the California Expo.

Throughout the day, I had a chance to visit with Elizabeth O'Neal, Sheri Fenley, Thomas MacEntee, Craig Manson, Denise Levenick, Leah Allen, Gena Ortega, Jean Wilcox Hibben, Kathryn Doyle, Lisa Alzo, A.C. Ivory, Becky Wiseman and many more friends.

In the evening, I attended the live Genealogy Gems podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke.

Her guests were Craig Manson of GeneaBlogie:

And Sheri Fenley of The Educated Genealogist:

Did I mention that there was dessert at this live podcast?

At the end of the evening, I had a nice visit with Denise Levenick over garlic fries. They were so good and so was the conversation. Many more of the bloggers met up for a later dinner, but I was too tired. Being a  Texas girl in the Pacific time zone will do that to you. I went back to my hotel and fell asleep fast. Day 2 of the Expo was only a few hours away.