Most of this week’s newsletter was written in a hotel room in Portland, Oregon, and on board Northwest Airlines while flying coast to coast. I attended the four-day annual conference of the National Genealogical Society, held in Portland this time around. This year’s event was co-hosted by Genealogical Forum of Oregon, Inc.

The annual NGS conference usually is a successful affair, and this year’s event lived up to my expectations. More than 250 seminars and classes were presented. The vendors’ area was the largest ever at an NGS conference with more than 200 booths. The convention hall is a first-class facility with many meeting rooms within convenient walking distance of the entrance and the vendors’ hall, two snack bars, as well as a half-dozen or so hotels and a number of restaurants within a five-minute walk. Even better, Portland’s MiniMax, a super clean and efficient trolley line, stops right in front of the convention center. With this excellent system, it was easy to travel around Portland. I went to Old Town and Chinatown one night and found that travel back and forth was a snap.

I didn’t hear the final attendance numbers, but it looked like 1700 or 1800 people to me. I talked with conference attendees from all over the U.S. as well as others from Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, and New Zealand. The seminars they attended seemed to work well; the rooms had excellent acoustics, and everything seemed to flow on schedule.

I spent much of my time in the vendors’ hall, looking for new products and updates to existing products. I was able to find a number and will write about many of them this week and over the next few weeks. However, this year’s event seemed to have fewer new product introductions than most of the past conferences I have attended. Also, while the total number of booths was the largest ever, the "big guns" in genealogy seemed to have smaller booth displays than in past years. With the notable exception of Heritage Quest, most of the genealogy vendors seemed to have scaled back their conference promotional efforts. I guess that is no surprise; if you have been reading the business news over the past six months, you already know that American computer companies and many other businesses are in a business downturn. The genealogy-related businesses apparently are experiencing the same economic downturn as the rest of corporate America. Nonetheless, most of the "big guns" were in attendance and were displaying their latest products in somewhat smaller booths than normal.

The Friday evening conference banquet was a major highlight of this year’s event. A large audience observed a number of awards presentations. The late Richard Lackey (4 October 1941–16 January 1983) was elected to the National Genealogy Hall of Fame. Shirley Wilcox, former president of the National Genealogical Society, was appointed as a Fellow of the Society. Numerous other awards and announcements were also made.

The banquet’s after-dinner speaker was Megan Smolenyak, whose articles on the Korean War Repatriation Project have appeared recently in this newsletter. Megan did mention that project briefly, but her talk was on a broader topic of "Honoring Our Ancestors." Megan discussed the ways in which different cultures honor their ancestors and heritage. She then offered numerous suggestions on possible ways we can honor our own ancestors and simultaneously learn to appreciate our heritage.

I might decline one method of honoring our ancestral surnames that Megan discussed. She discussed a young French-Canadian man’s ideas and showed the results of his efforts on the projection screen. This young man had four large coats of arms tattooed on his back, coats of arms that he believed belonged to his ancestors. When I say "large," I mean that they covered his back. There was a loud gasp in the audience when the man’s picture appeared on the screen since many genealogists know that coats of arms claimed by many are bogus. While we did not have an opportunity to examine the credibility of this man’s claims, there is some doubt as to the authenticity of the arms he so proudly bared when he removed his shirt. I think that I will honor my ancestors in some other manner.

One of my personal highlights of this year’s conference occurred after the close. About twenty readers of this newsletter went out to dinner together on Saturday evening. We devoured a large quantity of Mexican food and probably annoyed other patrons in the restaurant with our raucous behavior. However, I think that all who attended had a good time. I find it delightful to dine with friends who share a passion, that of genealogy. My thanks to all who attended.

The next National Genealogical Society conference will be held 15-18 May 2002 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It will be co-hosted by the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society. Those two organizations will have a major challenge: they need to figure out how to present an even better event than the 2001 conference. I hope to be there next year to report on their efforts.