Many many thanks to my co-committee members Marie
Hickey (Auckland Libraries), Jan Gow, Don Gallagher, Chris Bayley, David
Bryant, Rex Wood, Dorothy Walker and Bryn Smith from the Genealogical Computing
Group.
We had three international speakers this year, Chris Paton
(Scots/Irish), Dirk Weissleder (German/European) and Helen Smith (Australian,
British, DNA), as well as many local speakers. We had about 30 lectures
across the 2.5 days, 12 workshops, a Beginners' Table and 25 exhibitors:
Ancestry, Auckland Council Libraries, Auckland War Memorial Museum,
Beehive Books/HOG Tours, Chinese genealogy researchers, Families in
British India (FIBIS), FamilySearch, FamNet/Jazz Software, Guild of One Name
Studies (GOONS), Kippenberger Research Library - National Army Museum -
Waiouru, Indian genealogy / West Research Centre, My Heritage, New Zealand
Fencible Society Inc, New Zealand Micrographics/Recollect, New
Zealand Military Historical Society, New Zealand Society of Genealogists Head
Office and Interest Groups: English, European, Irish, Maori, Pacific
Island, Scottish; Unlock the Past/ Gould Genealogy, Wales – New Zealand Family
History Society.
We had awesome financial sponsors: Auckland Council
Libraries, Genealogical Computing Group, MyHeritage, Ancestry, The Genealogist
and LivingDNA, who also donated prizes for our raffles. Many exhibitors also
donated prizes for raffles too. Altogether we had more than 75 raffle prizes
totally over $9000!
110 people attended the opening night on Friday night where
we shared some yummy canapes and heard from Chris Paton on “Genealogy without
borders”, and heard from LivingDNA about their offer (a mixture of video call
from the UK, recorded video, and explanation from Michelle Patient), and then
we had a panel discussion with our three speakers Chris, Dirk and Helen, about
the future of family history.
Saturday and Sunday were very busy and we know for certain
we had over 750 people attend across the two days – however, we suspect the
actual number was a fair bit higher, as not everyone would have taken name
labels or bags (which was our method of trying to calculate attendance). We got
a lot of complete beginners again this year, so hopefully we have infected them
with our enthusiasm, and they have now become addicted!
You can view the photo album for the Expo on Facebook. And you can read reviews about the Expo from Chris Paton's British Genes,
For those still looking for the handout notes still from the Expo, you can find them at our Dropbox folder.
It had been posted on the Auckland Research Centres' Facebook page, as the Auckland Libraries new website was about to be launched. Please
feel free to like the Research Centre’s Facebook page to be kept informed of
what events and new resources we have in!
All going well, we hope to hold the next Auckland Family
History Expo again next year – weekend Friday 10 to Sunday 12 August 2018. If it goes ahead, once again, we plan for it to
be free, and for the exhibitors to pay minimal costs so it will be affordable
for everyone to attend.
Watch this space!
Happy hunting
Seonaid
Watch this space!
Happy hunting
Seonaid
