Who Do You Think You Are Live 2011

Back in January I told you all that I had booked my tickets for WDYTYA2011 and was very excited about it. Well yesterday was The Day, and what a day it was.

I got there, with my Queue Jump ticket for 9:45am, and waited anxiously to get in and have a look around all that was on offer. The extra money for the Queue Jump was definitely worth it and I'll be doing the same again next year. This year they were charging £2 for Show Guides (they were free last year), so I didn't bother getting one deciding instead that I'd wander around to get my bearings and find out where the Workshops were set up.


Ancestry.co.uk had their Members Area set up again this year, giving goody bags to members; a re-usable cloth bag containing some promotional material, 20% discount off next years subscription and a magnifying glass with a light (which I got silly excited over again). This year instead of doing free tea and coffee they were providing talks and demonstrating their new iphone / ipad app. Personally I'm waiting for the andriod version as I hate apple products.

Not the members area, just their GIANT stand

I didn't leave until gone 5pm and I was dead on my feet, with a load of purchases and a sore neck from carrying it all around. It was however worth it. I got myself subscriptions (plus free gifts) to a couple of magazines; at least one of them I will not be extending past the £3 for 3 issues or £5 for 5 issues but for £8 I get 8 issues and a better idea of what I want out the mags as I'm easily distracted / bored / disappointed with the quality and subject of the various articles. I also joined the Guild of One Name Studies as I'm debating whether or not to register STEERS.


The most useful thing, for me at least, was the talks. I attended three talks and found them all to be extremely informative and very well presented so I must pause to say Thank You to the Society of Genealogists for organising them all so well.


Over the next couple of days / weeks I'll be blogging my notes from these talks and making comment on where its going to take me and what my next steps will be.