Wednesday, December 23, 2009

A Christmas Present for You

Steven Kapp Perry sent me a link to his podcast in which he interviews Ron Tanner, product Manager for New FamilySearch. I hope you'll enjoy listening to it as an early Christmas Present.

The last minute shipping deadlines pass today. It has been a great Christmas season for us and we are so thankful for our wonderful clients. We appreciate how open you have been as you have shared your families with us and let us mirror them back to you. And we hope that the charts we have done for you this season will remind your family members of the love and heritage that envelops them. I am gratified to have made so many new friends in our associations with you. Thank you.

We so love genealogists--they are phenomenal people to work with.

As soon as we get the last orders off this morning, I'm going to make cookies with my kids for the rest of the day. I hope you and yours have a beautiful holiday season.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

My first responsibility for UGA

You will never believe what happened last Saturday at the UGA meeting. I accepted a nomination as Vice President because I knew I was running against some fabulous people and I could never be elected. You should have seen my face. Astounded isn't even the word.

I'm so excited though. One of the things I really am passionate about is helping people improve their genealogy skills. I've grown tremendously with that the last couple of months and want to see others become better at it too. I'm amazed at how you can be a genealogist for many years and not necessarily get better at it. But UGA has been a wonderful source of genealogy education and I think it has even more potential ready to bloom.

So the first responsibility I've volunteered on for UGA is to tell you about Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and make sure as many of you as can take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. I've never been able to go because I was always working but I've always wanted to. But this is THE place for indepth knowledge taught by the experts. They have Paula Stewart Warren teaching the American Records track, Mary Hill teaching Mid-Atlantic Research, Kory Meyerink on Immigrant Origins, Tom Jones on Advanced Research Methodology and Craig Scott on US Military Records and several other wonderful instructors and topics. This is a great indepth look at these subjects. You can see the course outlines here. I'll be there. Hope to see you too.

The vibes are goin' on...

The last week has definitely been good for my ego. It is so nice to be appreciated by my peers. Especially people that I admire and appreciate so much.

Lisa Alzo has passed me the Genea-Speak award. Thank you so much Lisa for the kind words. I'm so honored to receive it from you. It is given "for excellence in writing, speaking, and the promoting of good genealogical practices." The requirement upon receiving the award is to pass it on to at least two deserving recipients. I am going to send it on to the two people who have completely inspired me this last couple of months. Ancestry Insider and Mark Tucker.

The Ancestry Insider keeps us up on two of genealogy's biggest entities Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com. I am honored to know the identity of and be able to work with AI and it seems every time I get to talk to him I come away with a shift of paradigm. He is a brilliant person and I look forward to learning lots more from him.

Mark Tucker from the Think Genealogy Blog is another of the great thinkers in the genealogy world. He has a wonderful graphical mind that he has used to come up with good ways to help beginners understand complex ideas. He also turned me on to the book Slideology. I look forward to learning lots more from Mark as well.



Lisa Louise Cooke and James Tanner have also both passed me the Kreative Blogger Award. I so appreciate their recognition and highly recommend their blogs to you as well. With this award, I have to reveal 7 things you may not know about me and then recommend 7 more blogs to you.

1. I "know" (read: have studied) German, Greek, Contemporary and Ancient Hebrew, Standard and Colloquial Arabic and Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

2 My favorite sandwich is cream cheese and raspberry jam, and my favorite color is purple.

3. I spent a week in the Massai Mara Game Preserve. Giraffes are absolutely beautiful in the wild.

4. The last 5 months have totally overhauled my research methodology in genealogy. But I haven't talked about that much on my blog yet.

5. I've decided to write a book. Don't hold your breath, but I think I have something to say. You'll catch some of it here I'm sure.

6. I am going to begin teaching in the Genealogy Program at Salt Lake Community College in January.

7. I am astounded to have been elected last weekend as the Vice President of the Utah Genealogical Association for 2010 (more on that in the next post.)

For the Kreative Blogger Award, I pass the baton to:
Carolyn L Barkley Genealogy and Family History.com
Renee Zamora Renee's Genealogy Blog
Elyse Doerflinger Elyse's Genealogy Blog
Tom Kemp at Ask the Genealogist
Marlo Schuldt The Heritage Collector's Blog A brand new blog by a great writer.
Elizabeth O'Neal Little Bytes of Life (and she beat me barely so I'm counting it anyway.)
the Footnote Maven Shades of the Departed. (The master.)

Go check them out and tell them I said hi.