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Monday, June 11, 2012

Jamboree Day 1 Friday June 8, 2012

Jamboree Friday June 8 The first session I attended was Carrie Cook's: Oral History, Theater of the Mind. Carrie was a delightful speaker with insight on oral history. Her personal examples of oral history techniques were humorous as well as easy to implement. I realized that I needed to use more open ended questions while interviewing and its generally a good idea not to use leading questions unless someone continually strays off topic. Carrie's visuals were in tune with the theme of Jamboree for this year "Lights, Camera, Ancestors". The second session was Steve Luxenberg's Lost in the Unknown: The Delicacy of Probing Family Secrets. My Jewish friend told me about Steve and that he spoke at the Jewish Genealogical Society of San Diego. She spoke highly of him. I could really tell that he was an investigative journalist by the way he spoke. I never realized how damaging it can be for a family to keep those family secrets. We all have "skeletons in closet" to some extent. In my family, my mother's family was supportive and nurturing during family crisis and did not tend to hide things. My grandparents on my mother's side were both journalists. I did learn from my mom that obsession with a journalism job can be damaging to a family as well and that my grandfather was more nurturing than my grandmother. This was not really a secret, just a perception of my mother's. My dad's family was not as close. Although, I find it interesting that as people move toward their later years reconnecting with family becomes more important to them. Such was the case with my father's family. The hallways at the hotel for some of the sessions were so packed it was almost scary to maneuver them. I opted out of a session I really wanted to attend: Lisa Alzo's Show Dont Tell: Creating Interactive Family Histories. I guess I was intimidated by the crush of humanity in the hallway. I went to gather books and resources from the exhibit hall for the last session on Friday. Several bloggers and computer users were commenting that the Internet was spotty and slow so I did not attempt to connect while I was at the conference. I chose to spend the time talking with friends and choosing my sessions for Saturday. Saturday's Jamboree sessions will be in a separate post.

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