Wrap-Up From The UK:Who Do You Think You Are Live 09

The UK genealogy show “Who Do You Think You Are” is over for another year. Talking to Dick Eastman and Megan Smolenyak I was surprised to hear that there is nothing like this In North America. Perhaps it’s the geography that prevents hundreds of thousands or even millions of Family historians from getting together to share their passion for the ‘artform’.

Attendance at the UK show was probably around 10 thousand this year, although official figures aren’t out yet. The next largest shows in the US, are less than a fifth of this size: Genealogy Jamboree, FGS in Little Rock and NGS in North Carolina.

How is it that when family history is so important to so many people that the world’s biggest market does not have any major celebration for this?

Clearly one answer is cost; the other seems to be that there are quite a few people thinking about putting on a show, but no one has quite got there yet. My hope is that the airing of the TV show “Who Do You Think You Are” in the US, with celebs like Sarah Jessica Parker and others, will provide the platform for the live show to be spun into action in the same way that it did in the UK.
With arcalife attending the show for the first time for its UK launch, we definitely took away the feeling that we had joined a community of companies (albeit competitive).

Thank-you to those who made us feel welcome, especially Megan Smolenyak, Dick Eastman, Nick Barratt, Olivier Van Calster, Charlotte Campion, Charlotte Wiberg and Chris Paton.

In all the show was highly successful and enjoyable for us. Here are some of our favourite moments: check out our YouTube Channel – you might just find yourself in there… We snapped a few photos as well. Would be great to reconnect with those we met and meet more of you out there – post a comment and let us know what you think!