Unique family history presentations.

We've run in to a couple of interesting ways to present your family's history lately.

The first was at http://familyfun.go.com/parties/party-planning-ideas/cousin-fun-709930/4/. When we saw this in an old Family Fun magazine we had to try it out. So we made one for a family gathering this summer. This is our family in sugar:
licorice, cookies, mini M&Ms, chocolate sprinkles and frosting with chocolate sprinkles for doggie fur. Needless to say it was a hit.

Later, on our trip to the Grand Canyon a couple of weeks ago, we made one of those unplanned stops at Moqui Cave http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moqui_Cave and http://www.visitkanab.info/article.cfm?cat=3&id=29. This cave was once a secluded tavern in the time of Prohibition, and now houses an eclectic collection of florescent minerals and dinosaur tracks--one of those places that you stop at on family vacations. But the thing I was most interested in was this: At the bottom of the picture is a bas relief wood carving of the image at the top of this picture. In it are all of the family of Garth Chamberlain, the sculptor whose grandfather Thomas Chamberlain is the patriarch in this large family. Along the bottom is this:
Each of the people in the carving are labeled by name. It is an amazing picture in the first place, but then to see it lovingly carved in wood is really beautiful. You can see why it is displayed with the awards it won at various shows.

While we aren't offering any charts like these--you can design almost anything else through our custom design service. We'll show you the proof online before we print so that we can adjust it to exactly what you are envisioning. And then when you are ready, we'll take your payment and shipping information and ship it right out to you. Let us help you display your family's history in a beautiful and unique way.

Confidentiality

So we took our first real family vacation since we started this company, where we really left everything and let our employees pick up the slack. Hopefully none of you noticed. While we have traveled more than I could ever imagine with this company, and it's been a great education for the kids, it has always been with the email and sometimes phones attached but this time we left them home. It was blissful, and as any company owner would know--quite a feat.

I have some great pictures of all of us at the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde and Arches National Park. Cute, funny and just beautiful. But the one I'm going to show you is this one:
Yep. Just me. Because our children are still minors, you aren't going to find them in any of our pictures or social networking on the net. I've kept them and information about them very tight to my chest because they are the focus of my life and too precious to treat with even the slightest shade of risk. Now they are getting older, and I'm probably being a little neurotic at this point, but unless you happen to meet them at a conference you probably won't be hearing about them anytime soon.

Sometimes you want to do the same with a genealogy chart. In each of the genealogy database programs, you can mark the people you want to keep confidential. In most genealogy programs it is called privatizing, using privacy settings or marking a person, event or relationship as confidential. Sometimes it is just a setting on who you want to export to a gedcom but then you can send the file to us that way and those people will be excluded. Look up the word private or confidential in the help screens on your program and they will tell you how your program does it.

Normally though, we don't need you to do any special processing before you send us the file. You can send us the actual file in any format, you don't even have to create a gedcom. In fact we would prefer that you didn't because people often inadvertently exclude people they want on the chart. Just send us the whole file and we'll just take out the parts we need. The file doesn't go anywhere else, and we'll delete it in 30 days as soon as we know you are happy with your chart. At that point, we are happy to go in and create a confidentiality setting for all the living people or anything else like that. But we probably won't know which ex spouses you don't want to show, or step children or even black sheep if you are so inclined. So on those you may want to privatize them yourself. Or just let us know specifically who to take out. We're happy to help you any way we can to make this easy for you.

Changing plans--conferences, conferences, conferences.

Well you can't keep a good company quiet for long.

Thank you to all of you for the fantastic summer we've had. We've hired two more people and bought another plotter to keep up with everything(6!?! I don't know how Kim keeps them all running--it's all quite complicated). We're so happy to have been able to help so many people to display and honor their family history. It was good that we slowed down on conferences and focused on taking good care of your charts. We have barely stayed on top of things.

But now we are ready to get growing even more. Now, with more help trained, not only have we accomplished a real vacation away from work, but we are heading back into conferences--and just in time for some great ones. Here's what we are planning for the rest of this year:

• August 19th to 20th, 2011, Utah Genealogical Association Conference

Sidetrack here--You really ought to sign up for this one next weekend if you haven't. It is a screaming deal for only $20. The conference combines excellent presenters and hands on labs from beginning to advanced levels. Co-sponsored by the Genealogy department of Salt Lake Community College, there is an entire ICAPGEN track and a total of 144 classes over the two days.

We're also going to:

• September 7th to 11th Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference (Thanks to Pat Oxley for fitting us in last minute).
  
• September 17th, 2011, Ogden Regional Family History Conference, Ogden, Utah.
• September 24th, 2011, Las Vegas Family History Jamboree, Las Vegas, Nevada
  
• October 7th and 8th, 2011, Northern California Family History Expo in San Mateo, CA
• November 11th and 12th, 2011Georgia Family History Expo, Duluth, Georgia

I'm still slowing down the lecturing (UGA president and all that has slowed me down there) but we'll be available with discounts, fill-in-the-blank charts to work on and free consultations. So please come see us. We'd love to talk to you about how to display your family history.