Upcoming Presentation

Pattie and I are gearing up for a late January presentation in South Florida. We are going to be presenting two sessions: Taming Templates; Next Generation. Taming Templates is going to get a face lift. A few things have changed. We'll need to look at the Next Generation too because Pattie and I have both made discoveries since the last time this one was presented. Then we have to rehearse...get the timing down pat. Pattie and I could each go on for hours. We never suffered from not enough to say. It's always not enough time to say it. Tis' a good problem.

Pattie in Sharon Tate Moody's Column Today

The amusing tale of the birth of Pattie's calendar--Everyday Genealogy--is in Sharon Tate Moody's column today in the Tampa Tribune. Congrats to Pattie. I hope this makes her sell out of calendars.

Click here to see article.

Editor's Position Update

I didn't get it, but it's OK. Getting it would have meant that a fun hobby would have had to become a business. I'm not all that interested in turning my hobby into a business at the moment. When I retire, I'll perhaps pursue this type of thing then. In the meantime, I get to learn more and have fun.

Editor's Position

Hmmm...so far no word on whom they picked. I did get an email for one of the people on the interview committee. He said that the interview with me gave the group "lots of food for thought." I'm sure my opinionated stance didn't go unnoticed. Sometimes it's a plus, sometimes a minus. It's situational. So I'm waiting to hear. I was happy to simply be able to give them an opinion and be included in the interview process. I'll post to the blog as soon as I get any news...

Enter to Win a FREE Everyday Genealogy Calendar

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You must post your comment by December 17th to qualify.

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Mailing Lists, Facebook and Farmville - Taking Inventory of Your Research Toolbox

This week a mailing list I subscribe to had an interesting discussion: Does Facebook have a place in genealogy research? The response from the subscribers on the list surprised me. While I expected some people not to be interested in Facebook I was surprised that some found little to no value in what Facebook had to offer.

While Facebook will never replace 'boots on the ground' research it does offer the people doing family research a chance to connect with LIVING people. Sometimes I think that genealogists forget that searching and finding living people can be just as important as finding their ancestors.

Using Facebook or any other social networking platform allows genealogists to reconnect with their immediate family and find distant cousins. I have reconnected with many first cousins that I have not seen for over 40 years. I have also 'met' second and third cousins who have helped me round out family stories and identify people in family pictures.

Will Facebook replace Rootsweb, Ancestry.Com or FootNote? No, but it does allow us to draw people in who do not consider themselves genealogists, but may have information and artifacts that may enhance or jumpstart our research.

Think about it - do you know where that family bible is that you have always heard about... It could be in the attic of a distant relative who could care less about genealogy, but loves playing Farmville!

Editor Interview

Interviewed for job as Editor in Chief of a national magazine. I think I did OK but who knows. At any rate, I was so happy to be included in the first cut...honored really. I've worked hard on all of the publications for which I've been responsible.

This job would be much bigger and very high profile. I'd have to kick everything I do up a notch. The opportunity is coming a bit sooner than I had hoped. I was planning on pursing this type of thing when I retired. But I decided I have to strike while the iron is hot. Who knows when the spot will open again? So wish me luck!

Post Sarasota

Sarasota was fun; however, I hardly got to go to any of the presentations...well actually there were only a few that I was interested in. I got to those so I shouldn't complain. It just wasn't a good year for me as far as breakout sessions were concerned.

I have scads of FSGS newsletter work to do. The February issue should be jammed packed. I'm hoping that the "fishing" I was doing at the meeting pays off in articles from new writers. I get so tired seeing my own name in print. I'm gonna start making up nome de plumes just for fun. I once wrote under the name Crystal Klear Wrighter (say it)and had a whole company guessing who Crystal was. The writers made up all sorts of wild stories about who Crystal was. Perhaps I can come up with a fun one for a genealogist.

I ended up with a cold. It started in my head and dropped to my chest. I'm sure I ran into the germ somewhere in Sarasota. I've lost my voice twice. It's such a pain.

On the plus side, I'll have four days to do all sorts of things that I've been meaning to do. Writing, writing, writng, printing, printing, printing, emailing, emailing, emailing...you get the idea. I have a newsletter competition to enter, a book to update, and other projects to work on.

Garry and I will go out for dinner on Thursday. I might even be able to get out into my garden (heaven!).

Going to Sarasota

Garry is bach it this weekend because Pattie, Cathy and I are off to Sarasota for the FSGS Annual Conference. For me that means meetings since I'm the newsletter editor, and therefore, on the board. With the vendor table added to the mix, I'm not sure how many sessions I'm going to be able to get to attend. It should be a fun weekend.

FSGS Newsletter

Today, I found a new website that I'd like to write about in the February 2011 issue of the newsletter. I've written to the owners of the website hoping that they will want me to do the article.

I also bought a fishing vest today. I'm planning on wearing it--diginity be damned--at the state conference next week. I'm hoping to snag a few article writers for me and for Cori. We'll see what I'm able to scare up in the way of help in filling the pages.

Pack Peddler's Place: Birth of Everyday Genealogy

Pack Peddler's Place: Birth of Everyday Genealogy: "Everyday Genealogy What are you suppose to do with all the notes and handouts you accumulate while attending genealogy meetings, seminars, o..."

FSGS Newsletter

As of this week the newsletter is with the printer. So now it's a matter of waiting to get the print version out there. I've already deployed the email version. I'm not hearing much so far. Sometimes it seems to take a few days before I start hearing anything positive or negative about it.

Now the hunt for the next "find" is on. So far I've pretty much managed to unearth something new for each issue. I suppose I'll run into something over the next two months.

One interesting item is that Barnes & Noble seems to going into the eBook publishing business for self-publishing on their reader (Nook). It looks interesting...something that genealogist shouldn't ignore.

Pattie and I are off to the St. Pete meeting tomorrow. It's the first time we are going. Sharon Tate Moody is speaking. So we thought we'd go on an adventure. It will be interesting to see if Sharon remembers us.

Paint Presentation

I've been tinkering with the Paint presentation again. It's a fun little item. I created the presentation in Google Docs and shared it with Pattie. We can both go in and edit. Also, when we get ready to do a presentation, we can do it from any computer located anywhere in the world. Welcome to cloud computing! The presentation template in Google Docs is a bit quirky but still managable. The topic should be a fun one. We're booked to do the first one in July 2011 at the FGS meeting in Tampa.

I've also been working on the FSGS newsletter. I'm the editor. The issue is turing out to be a good one. I managed to snag an article from George G. Morgan. I'm hoping to get more national/internation figures like him to contribute. It's a matter of me plunking up the nerve to approach people and ask them...and then accepting "No!" gracefully in the hopes that I'll get an occassional "Yes!" We'll see how much nerve I can work up.

I'm making progress on my "tree" book but my family saga is dead in the water. Maybe over the winter I can revive it. Pattie has all of these ISBN numbers that we have to use up...

Everyday Genealogy: Everyday Genealogy to be available on iPhones!

Everyday Genealogy: Everyday Genealogy to be available on iPhones!: "Just wanted to let you now that Everyday Genealogy will also be available as an iPhone application this fall! And I made sure that it will w..."

Pattie's Secret Genealogy Project

Pattie reports on her personal blog (PackPeddler) that she working on her top secret project again. It's a race to see if she'll finish it on time...

Fun Day at FGS meeting in Tampa

Pattie and I had the pleasure of meeting up with lots of friends today at the FGS meeting. We had a chance to catch up on business while driving into and out of Tampa. I've been working on a presentation using Paint and Pattie has a proposal for how to use the items I can produce with paint to dress up a generated book. We'll see if we can pull something coherent together.

Succesfully Redirected Go Daddy Account

Yeah! Redirecting the Go Daddy link to this blog was a piece of cake. Go Daddy had improved its interface...so much easier.

So far I've complete four articles for the FSGS Journal (Cori is happy) and a new Paint presentation. I've been playing with paint for a long time now. You can do all sorts of interesting stuff with it. Now all Pattie and I need to do is come up with a few more tools that we use that others most like don't know about and we'll have another mix and match presentation...my favorite kind.

Playing with Google Blogs

While playing with my family research blog, it occurred to me that Pattie and I would have an easier time maintaining a blog than we have had maintaining a website. The big complication is that my provider account is difficult to access and quirky to use. And it's a limited access account so that Pattie couldn't just drop in and change something when she wanted to do so. Indeed, the reason that I set up a personal family research blog was the ease of use. So I talked to Pattie and she said, "Go for it!" Thus we have a blog.

I'm hoping that Pattie and I will be able to report on the new discoveries, announce new presentations, and have a bit of fun. We'll see.