I can still feel the energy that was buzzing from the attendees! It was really awesome! People from all walks of life, ages, shapes and some even on their scooters. Nothing keeps a real genealogist down. Mothers with babies even attended, none of them in my classes or I might have felt differently, but hey, it's all relative right!
We started the day off with words of wisdom from Jyl Pattee about discovering your WOW! Basically what that means is don't wait to do it because no one else will do it. Create, Capture, Archive and Share! You can use Instagram, Blog, Scrapbook, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, etc. What matters is that you share what's happening, it will document yourself as you live your life. Have fun and let me know how you share your WOW!
My first class this day was "Research Ties" tracking your research with an online research log, by Jill Crandell. Jill has a developed her own Research logs that work really well for the genealogist because it was the ongoing personal logs that she developed to work best. It has a free two week trial and the subscription will be reasonable. She wasn't sure as of the time of the event but check out her website and try it for yourself. I like the idea of whatever online machine I am using I can pull up my logs, as long as the institute of choice has WiFi. Here's her site: http://researchties.com/ , you can read her blog and learn more. Have a look and fun with it.
Next was Crowdsourcing. Now this I didn't know just what the topic was but since I'm trying to gather information along the way from friends and family to get my research done, I thought this might be resourceful. Well, I did learn quite a bit. Most of what I've already been doing. I use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, blogs, Forums, the Research Wiki at familysearch.org (if you don't know about this one, check it out or contact me and I'll share how to use it), rootschat, world genweb, and breadcrumb trail to just name a few. You can use Timeline or concept boards to help you formulate your ideas or strategies. If you use familysearch.org and have noticed that you no longer have the forum, will there is page on the site for Research assistance from the great staff at the Family History Library, you can't get any better than that! Love those people and so helpful.
Then it was time for some vendor viewing. Gotta tell ya, some really great stuff was on exhibit, conceptual products, and must have and take home stuff. Got my RootsMagic 6 with the book for $20. So very cool and so many new items, came home to the hotel and uploaded it right away. Of course not enough time to play with it, but looks very nice. All the biggies were there, FindMyPast.com or uk, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, MyHeritage.com and a bunch of others. There were vendors for classes in Genealogy, crafty stuff, making stories on film/video, books, etc. Of course my cousin had her booth there and was extremely busy talking up Malta, she was chatting with the acquiry staff for all the big names, Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage and Archives to procure her masses of indexes, documents etc on the Maltese people who wandered all over the world it appears. Visit her blog to learn more about Malta with +Malta Made at http://backtomalta.blogspot.com/.
Notice I didn't say anything about eating. There is way too much to see and do for lunch. They do give you 1.5 hours for the lunch break but again, too much to see. So, off to my next class I went. This time it was "Using your Android Device for Genealogy and Family History" by David Lifferth. Way too much to share on that one. All I can say is there really is an app for that! You name it,it can be found to help you out: video phone calls, gps, book readers, camera, MIFI, calender, travel planner, ancestory.com has an app along with myheritage.com, gedstar pro, telgen, familytree, relationship finder, there even is an app for Japanese genealogy. How cool is that!
The last session was on the Blog Blitz with Lisa Louise Cooke. Most important on that talk was make sure you have a RSS feeder on your site. Hope you all can see mine and it is working. Please let me know if it isn't. And if you didn't know, Google Reader and iGoogle are going away, not sure on when.
From there it was off for dinner ( I do eat occasionally) and then the library. Found more stuff on my Scottish lines. Gotta love it! I also did what I found refer to as my elimination of records, which means I didn't find what I was looking for but didn't dwell on it. Always positive here. There are more lines and more dead folk to find.
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