WDYTYA Live 2011

So, after a bit of a break I'm back! Genealogy has taken a bit of a back seat over the last few months with the arrival of my 3rd child. Anyway I managed to get a ticket for Who Do You Think You Are Live at Olympia last weekend and spent a few hours of child free family tree time.

The night before I had taken a good look at the WDYTYA Live website and decided on the stands I wanted to visit. I knew that I had a short time scale as I was due to meet friends for lunch in central London so I wanted to make the most of my time.

I arrived at Olympia on Saturday 26th February at 9.30am and trooped off the underground with everyone else straight into the end of a queue. The queue seemed long but was constantly moving and within 5 minutes I had got through the front door. This was the point where my research came in handy - I immediately headed upstairs to pick up some tickets for a talk at 11am. But, the queue was long and I didn't want to waste any time and I knew from a previous visit that I would be able to stand at the back and listen so I headed off to the military area.

We have a ROBBINS ancestor who was part of the Royal Garrison Artillery in Gibraltar so I chatted to a guy on the Royal Artillery Museum stand. I bought a couple of books to provide a bit of background and a booklet about tracing military ancestors.

As it was still early I spent 5 minutes chatting to a guy on the PRONI stand and we worked out that to continue tracing my GUTHRIE roots there may be some estate management papers in the archives. So maybe one day I'll be able to go to Belfast and investigate that further.

Then it was off to the Guild of One Name Studies. I have been a member for a couple of years but after speaking with Corinne I took the plunge and registered my TILLIN one name study. I will let you know when my profile page is up and running.

Next door was the North of Ireland Family History Society which I joined as an associate member - I'm looking forward to their bi-annual publication and possibly doing a bit of research in Coleraine when I'm over there in August.

After a quick pause for a drink, I stopped at the Berkshire Family History Society where we found some TILLINs on their Marriage and Burial Indices. I didn't buy the CDs but I'm considering it as I know that the bulk of my TILLINs are from this county.

Finally I listened to the talk by D. Josh Taylor on organising. I missed the first 10 minutes but the part that I heard was really useful. I'm hoping to get hold of the handouts from the website at some point as there was quite a lot to take in.

And with that it was time to head off into Central London. I'd had a quick genealogy fix and enjoyed chatting with everyone. I think I'm getting braver and found that actually speaking to people made the WDYTYA experience much more fun. I also have 3 areas to focus my research on for the next few months which will hopefully stop me going off on too many tangents!