I will be attending the NGS conference this week and will be spending a lot of time in the vendors’ area talking with the companies who exhibit there. I certainly will be watching any demos of new products and will be taking notes. I hope to write about these discoveries in next week’s newsletter.

As always, there is some risk of the computer gods not cooperating when traveling. I will be writing next week’s newsletter on my laptop and handheld computers while in Milwaukee, so I will be dependent upon dial-up telephone connections from the hotel and wireless modem connections at airports and other locations. There is a risk that next week’s newsletter will be delayed a bit.

I would also like to invite newsletter readers who are attending the conference to join me Saturday evening for a Dutch treat dinner. The Saturday evening dinners have become somewhat of a tradition over the years. These dinners occur after the conference has finished and everyone can sit back and relax. The dinners started off some years ago as a number of genealogists found themselves alone in a strange city, looking for a place to dine. Some of these strangers, myself included, compared notes, and then all went off together as newly found friends. Spending dinner with people with similar interests as your own is always better than dining alone in a strange city.

At the next genealogy conference, some of us got together to do the same thing again, and we invited still more people. We did this again and again, and now these dinners have occurred for fourteen years. There is never a set agenda; we simply eat and talk.

As always, this year’s dinner is not planned in advance. It will be a last minute effort; no restaurant will be selected until after we all arrive in Milwaukee and scout out a place willing to seat a large bunch of raucous genealogists on a Saturday evening. As you might imagine, not all restaurants are willing to seat that large a crowd on what might be their busiest night of the week.

Previous Saturday evening dinners have had varied results. The number of attendees has varied from twenty to perhaps fifty or so. At some conferences we have had private rooms while other years have seen us seated at multiple tables in the restaurant’s main dining room. The food has also varied in quality and in price. The ambient noise level has also varied widely. However, I think everyone has enjoyed himself or herself. I know that the conversations over dinner typically have been first rate.

There will be a sign-up sheet for dinner on the bulletin board that typically is provided for postings at these conferences. We usually need a firm headcount by Friday night or early Saturday morning, as we have to notify the restaurant. By sometime Saturday, the sign-up sheet will also list the time and location of the dinner.

Milwaukee residents: Do you have any recommendations for a restaurant within walking distance of the convention center or within easy access via public transportation? One that can handle a crowd on a Saturday night? If so, send a note to richard@eastman.net. I’d also appreciate it if a local volunteer would step forward to help me coordinate all this. A lot of genealogists certainly will say "Thank you" if you could help make our stay in your fair city a more enjoyable experience.

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