Having returned from my trip to Birmingham and this year’s Who Do You Think You Are? Live, it is only now that I can look back and consider what I thought of the show.
Overall it was a very enjoyable event, even if I was a bit disappointed by the lack of certain family history societies that had not made it to the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) this year.
Full marks go to those who did lay their stalls out. I think that FHS stands are an important component of a family history show and I would hate it if more stayed away.
Looking back to the years at Olympia, there always seemed to be more societies there than currently exhibiting in Birmingham. I also got the impression that several small genealogical businesses had bowed out this year and was equally disappointed that even The National Archives were not present at the show!
While all the big family history companies were there as usual, I couldn’t help notice the number of charity stands in the shell-scheme section of the hall and the small number of exhibitors that were unrelated to family history – I can only assume that their presence was as a result of canny businesspeople believing that the profile of the visitor to WDYTYA? LIVE would be a match to their own potential customer. I didn’t photograph any of these stands, so I am not referring to any that appear below!
Among some of the other interesting family history stands that got my attention were…
Writing the Past, run by Michael Sharpe, a genealogist, researcher and writer. As well as providing research services he also offers to create a book or a website to present your family history. I hope to look at Writing the Past in a bit more detail in a later post.
I had intended to post a video in the next few days, but I am just battling with a slight technical issue with some of my video files from the show – so fingers crossed that I get this sorted!
Searching for Theatrical Ancestors was yet another stand that caught my eye. Here I spoke to Professor Katherine Cockin from the University of Hull about their Ellen Terry and Edith Craig Datebase at ellenterryarchive.hull.ac.uk
I hope to be able to post a video here shortly, so watch this space!
And then there was the breathtakingly beautiful family trees created by Genealogy Art. I spent some time with Wladimir Carlos Ledochowski and with luck my video with him will be posted here in the near future. In the mean time take a look at his website at: www.genealogy-art.com
More posts to come from this year’s Who Do You Think You Are? Live show soon…
In the mean time I am already looking forward to York in June and the Yorkshire Family History Fair.
Disclosure: Compensated affiliate links are used in this post to TheGenealogist and Living DNA
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