Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Report from South Davis and BYU

Slowly but surely (and long). And I have a few pictures for you.

The South Davis Family History Fair is a wonderful fair put on by the South Davis Regional Family History Center. It is held at Bountiful High School in Bountiful Utah. They pack alot into one Saturday there. It is estimated that they had 1,763 people there on the 7th. They have five class periods with 18 classes a period for a total of 90 classes. It is basically a three day conference all packed together into 8 hours. Because it is put on by volunteers, the classes are free and the cost for a syllabus and sack lunch is only $10. It is an amazing volunteer effort headed by Donna Smith, Leonard Plazier, and Terry Carlson with many, many others. Congratulations to them on another great fair.

Kim spent the day in the gym with the vendors while I taught "Will your Family History Work Survive the Digital Age." I was the poster child for that lecture that day with computer crashes we had had the previous week. What a joke. I had lots of great suggestions for them on making sure they don't lose any data. (Which I didn't)

Then I also taught my new "Certified Genealogy Software that Makes New FamilySearch Easier" class. Mike Booth (RootsMagic) came in for tech support on that class (thanks Mike!) and we were both amazed at the crowd that class attracted. They are a different crowd than the regular class attendees for the software classes. I hope that I helped them to start moving into the new era of genealogy and in possibly choosing a new software to try.

Then, week three of the genealogy conference marathon (not long enough in my opinion :-) was the conferences at BYU. I've already reported some of the interesting stuff at the FamilySearch Developer's conference. It was good to get to be a student there for a day. As I'm sure you have heard, we received the Best Website Feature for Printing Award. (In case you didn't notice: the Best Website Feature for Printing Award.) Here are some other pictures of the day:

Bruce Buzbee and Mike Booth (RootsMagic) got the Best Dashboard, and Easiest to Sync award.










Gaylon Findlay (Ancestral Quest) got the Best Listing Tool and Most Comprehensive Sync award.










And John and Paula Vilburn (Ohana Software) got the Best Standardizer and Best Person Separator award.










We print and are partners with all of the above. We encourage you to go check out their products. You can get all the info on the awards at the FamilySearch link.

Then we were on to the BYU Computerized Genealogy Conference last weekend. I again taught "Certified Genealogy Software that Makes New FamilySearch Easier" and again was surprised at the people that class attracted. And I also taught my "Genealogy Charts to Help Your Research" We had a wonderful get together Friday night and talked late into the night about all sorts of things. (Don't worry Gordon your childhood secret identity is safe with me.) I do love the conference groupies that we get to hang out with.

L-R: Mike Booth (RootsMagic) Gordon Clarke (FamilySearch) John and Paula Vilburn (Family Insight) Luc Comeau (Legacy) Bruce Buzbee (RootsMagic) Barbara Renick (Speaker Extraordinare) Kim.


L-R: June Booth, Gordon Booth, Haybron Adams, Leonard Plazier.










Renee Zamora (Renee's Genealogy Blog) and Peggy and Paul Larsen (Crash Course in Genealogy) Sorry for the people I missed in the pictures. I swear I'm going to take more pictures. Thanks you guys. Miss you already. See you again soon.

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