WSGS 2014 Conference Arlington, Washington Day 3 and 4

My sister Jacque Lane and I were at a campground in the North Cascades National Park about 100 miles from Arlington, Washington, and we headed to Arlington after breakfast, cooler today than the day before in Wenatchee, Washington. We headed for the Smoky Point RV Park, and had lunch and took a shower before I went to the WSGS board meeting at the Quality Inn breakfast nook. After the meeting we went to the Skookum Brewery for dinner and to get our packets for the conference.

The photo above and below are the people filing into the Byrnes Performing Arts Auditorium.

Soon after this photo was taken Ruth Caesar, President of the Stillaguamish Valley Genealogical Society introduced the Mayor of Arlington, Washington to welcome us to Arlington, Washington. If you look close you can see Shirley Penna-Oakes and Delma McLean in the front of this photo.

Eric Strochein taught four classes in the auditorium: The Foundations of Genealogy: Using Direct Evidence, Using Direct and Indirect Evidence: The Importance of Methodical Evidence Evaluation, Using Direct and Indirect Evidence: Correlating and Analyzing Seemingly Unrelated Evidence, and Indirect and Negative Evidence Case Study. I only went to the first three and then I went to the Palatine Immigrants: Tracing and Locating 18th Century German Immigrants Online. by Luana Darby.

Lunch was after Eric's second class, a box lunch at the Arlington High School Commons. Look close and you can see Cindi of Cindi's List in purple just right of center.

This was Frank and Delma McLean manning the WSGS booth.

After the Palatine class we had about an hour to visit the vendors, or walk around to get out the kinks of sitting most of the day. I did visit the Historical Records Project and got to meet Amber Raney the person I have been E-Mailing for about a year about the Scribe program to index the millions of records on the Digital Archives. Next was the evening banquet and the WSGS Annual Meeting. They had a wonderful buffet dinner for us. Then Mike McKinnon took the podium to start the meeting. Roger Newman the WSGS Secretary read the minutes and Kathryn Bowen did the Treasurers report.

Roxanna Lowe Recognitions chairman handed out the volunteer awards.

Donna Potter Phillips from Eastern Washington Genealogical Society got one, as a surprise from the Tri Cities Genealogical Society.

Our two volunteer awards were for Lola McCreary who did not make it to Arlington and Shirley Penna-Oakes.

Although there was 38 volunteer awards only eight of the volunteers were there. Ruth Caesar the Stillaguamish Valley Genealogical Society was really surprised. Steve Morrison our EWGS speaker for our October Seminar was also honored along with Donna and Shirley.

Next was the award for the best Genealogical Society Website, won by the South King County Genealogical Society, presented by Virginia Majewski.

Next was Bonnie MacDonald our retiring newsletter editor, and Donna Potter Phillips and Charles Hansen the new WSGS Bloggers, that will try to do as good a job as Bonnie has done for the last four and a half years. We need help so we need more bloggers.

Next Ruth Caesar presented Eric and Karen Stroschein with awards for all the hard work they did in organizing this years WSGS conference.

Last was the Keynote speech by D. Joshua Taylor talking about how to get generation Y interested in Genealogy.