Unfortunately I haven't had the pleasure (or otherwise) of attending any of the Conferences to date but have read with interest the comments made by others in response to Miriam's posting. Being a subscriber to the Jewishgen mailing list makes it very obvious most posters to that list feel it belongs to them and don't understand that many of the subscribers live in far-flung places. They are often surprised to find that Jewish people exist in places like Australia and even New Zealand. I have no beef with Americans at all (in fact some of my best friends.................) but have made this observation after about 10 years of reading postings on Jewishgen. Therefore it comes as no surprise that Jill Whitehead found some issues with the recent conference in Chicago. Naomi Barnett Melbourne, Australia However, I did think it was very parochial - International being taken to mean USA in a lot of cases.