matthew’s alibi

Interviewing Dick Eastman at the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree, 2008

While I was wandering the aisles of the exhibition hall last weekend at the Southern California Genealogical Society’s annual conference, I had the tremendous pleasure of meeting Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak and Marcy Brown of Roots Television.  (And then totally failed to recognize Megan, even though I read her blog and have seen her on Roots Television.  Whoops!  Before I realized who she was, I even asked her if she knew anything about genealogical DNA.  She does.)

We were chatting about the blog buzz around Roots TV’s fantastic new series Unclaimed Persons, when out of the blue, Megan asked me if I would be willing to help them out on camera.

Dick Eastman, a genealogy blogger who I admire tremendously, is Roots Television’s usual correspondent at conferences; Megan suggested that it might be fun to turn the tables and have someone interview him for a change. I was thrilled for the opportunity; I’ve got a lot of genealogy blogs in my Google Reader, but my very first read of the day is always his.

So, I did, and it was a whole lot of fun, and I ended up interviewing several more people over the course of the afternoon.

My interview with Dick Eastman was posted on Roots TV today, and in watching it, I have learned one reason why my broadcast career so far has been in radio:  my head does not stop moving the entire time.  I’m nodding, I’m nodding, and nodding some more - I’m like a human bobblehead.  So, that’s embarrassing.  I was tempted to start counting the nods, but then I decided I wouldn’t be able to handle it if the tally ended up in quadruple digits (which it may).

The saving grace here is that everything Dick Eastman says in the interview is really interesting, and so hopefully everyone will be so busy watching and listening to him that they won’t even notice.

I would like to think that over the course of the afternoon, my head bobs less, but I guess only time will tell (and hopefully Roots Television will post some of the other interviews, too, because they were all really interesting as well - like the one with Brenton Simons from the New England Historic Genealogical Society, or the one with Schelly Talalay Dardashti of Tracing the Tribe - really, I learned something new and interesting from everyone I spoke with.)

The coolest part: I was mentioned in EOGN today!  Dick had some very kind words.  So, that made my day.   Really, it was just a tremendous pleasure to get to chat with him, and also to spend an afternoon with Marcy and Megan from Roots TV.

I hope you enjoy the video, (and while you’re at it, check out Unclaimed Persons…)