DNA to the MAX, days 2 and 3. MAXed Out!

After all the wonderful sessions, on Thursday, we all rolled-up for Friday and Saturday's sessions, determined to miss nothing. There wasn't enough time between dinner and bed for us to 'play' with what we had been shown and I do think that sleep was an after thought, for some people. The rain, forcast, for Sydney arrived and we were reaching for umbrellas and dodging puddles, on our way into the venue.

Friday and Blaine stared the day discussing, "Ethical and legal consideration for DNA evidence."  Blaine discussed naming a beneficiary, for our DNA tests, when we are gone. To always read the terms and conditions of every test, we take. To give information to those, we want to test, for us. How ot impart senstive information, we find. Ethics is something we all should be aware of and consider carefully.

My next session was with Shelly Crawford, from ConnectedDNA. She mentioned other tools you can use to look at clusters but, really I think her product is the best I've seen.

Morning tea was next and the noise level in the main exhibition area was very loud, proving that there was much to discuss,  friends to catch-up with and dinner plans to be made.

Blaine held centre stage with a wonderful talk on, "Shared matches and genetic networks."   This was something I could relate to and it was good to hear that I'm looking at my matches, in the correct way.

Lunch and Blogger photo were in order.

Helen Smith's talk, "How DNA can be used to solve genealogical puzzles," was my next session and I loved Helen's comment, "we are playing with living people now, not dead ones." We do send a lot of time with our deceased ancestors, don't we?  I love it when things finally click into place and this talk served to re-enforce what I thought and how I was applying my skills to solve my mystery.  Helen also suggested, creating an email that you use only for your DNA tests and contacts. 

Again sleep wasn't really on the agenda!

Saturday and the final day of this amazing conference.

Blaine started with this wonderful talk on, "The stories behing the segements,"  looking at how you can find family. It was very moving, as Blaine how he searched for is grandmother's birth family.

I then went to Louise Coakley's talk, "Hone in with WATO (What are the odds?)."  This had been mentioned several times over the previous two days and I thought I'd see what it was about.

Found with DNA Painter, WATO lets you test your hypothesis, regarding a relationship, by building a tree and adding in what you know  and trying different lines of the tree.  I played with it on Sunday and am happy with my results but will know more when I get a couple of more replies about shared cM's.

I stayed put and listend to Helen Smith talk on, "Developing a DNA research plan."  Not something I've done, so it was good to hear Helen give good, practical advice on how to set a research plan up. Somethings are common sense, like what do you already know? Others, like what test, who to test, had me thinking hard about somethings.

My last two sessions were 'All About Blaine!' With "Limitations of cousin matching" and "The Helen Marley Story: a case study."   

With his talk on cousin matching, I really was surprised with how companies, use small segements to give us matches, so much so that I really looked hard at that, with one company and eliminated 10 of my 13 pages of matches!  

His last talk was the case study and I enjoyed hearing how he worked through both the DNA and paper trail to solve it.  

Three amazing days. 41 individual sessions, 400+ attendies,  13 speakers,  14? vendors, all organised by one amazing man, Alan Phillips, assisted by his wonderful support team.  Thank you.

Now to find several extra hours, in each day to really get stuck into what I have learnt.