Thankful Thursday - Find A Grave Volunteers

I hope you all check out www.findagrave.com if you haven’t already.  No, I’m not affiliated with it.  In fact I have never posted to it.  BUT, those great volunteers who do are to be thanked.  And check back often.  I just found photos of a couple of headstones and I didn’t even know where my ancestors had died. 

This is another great group of volunteers.  I hope to become one of them in the near future (when I have nothing else to do?)  Well, that will never happen, so I just need to have a little more time.  Then you’ll see my listings and photos there too.

My Speaking Topic - Conferences

I will be  talking on Tuesday, October 4 at the Phoenix Genealogical Society meeting.  My topic will be Conferences:  What's New? Why Go?  and Getting Ready.  The society meetings begin at 1 pm and are held at the Crosswoods United Methodist Church, 7901 North Central Avenue, Phoenix.

Society Saturday - FHSA Seminar - Lisa Louise Cooke

The Family History Society of Arizona is pleased that Lisa Louise Cooke will be speaking at our Seminar/Annual Meeting.  She will be here for the entire day:  4 topics.  This meeting will be held on Saturday, March 10, 2012.  See the FHSA web site, http://www.fhsa.org/, for more information starting in November.  More details will also be available on this blog.

Tuesday's Tip - Article by Thomas on Collaborating with Genealogists

While reading google+ this morning, Caroline Pointer had a link to this article.  It's really good and has some great ideas for all of us.  Thank you, Caroline, for posting this link.

Thomas MacEntee wrote "How To Collaborate With Other Genealogists" and this article was posted on September 23, 2011.  The link is below.  Thomas, thank you for a well-written article with some really good suggestions.

http://www.archives.com/experts/macentee-thomas/collaborate-with-genealogists.html

 I'm going to mention this to some other genealogists.  If we all made an effort to follow even half of these suggestions, our community would expand and we may get through even more of our "brick walls." 

Society Saturday - FHSA (AZ) Glendale & Scottsdale Meetings

Next week, two chapters of The Family History Society of Arizona (FHSA) have meetings scheduled. 

On Monday night September 26, the Glendale chapter meets at the Glendale Public Library at 6:30 pm.  The program is a discussion on how previous speakers have improved our research.

On Tuesday night September 27, the Scottsdale chapter meets at the Paiute Neighborhood Center at 7:00 pm.  The speaker there will be Judy Nelson and her topic is "Updates and Changes in FamilySearch.org. 

For more information on these chapters as well as the other five chapters in FHSA, please see http://www.fhsa.org/.  Our society welcomes visitors and encourages members to attend as many chapter meetings as they wish each month. 

The third Wednesday of each month is a busy one because two chapters meet on that day:  Daytimers in the afternoon and East Valley in the evening.  I was glad to be able to attend both meetings today. 

Lynn Crawford spoke at the Daytimers chapter about PAF and gave ideas that were applicable not just to PAF and other genealogy software programs but to most windows programs also.  I didn't realize that you could reorder lists; add columns in lists, etc.  I also didn't realize why I would get different options when right clicking on things.  Thank you Lynn. 

Then I attended the East Valley meeting.  Trudi Arledge reminded us about some of those "old" ways to look at things that we often forget because we get so busy with all of the new technology.  Ideas like looking at neighbors and following migration paths were helpful years ago and are still good things to look at now.  Then Sherry Richardson, PhD gave us examples of a variety of ways to use technology to present our genealogy.  This including web sites, blogs, as well as scrapbooking, mapping and using digital recorders and YouTube.  These two ladies provided us with lots of things to think about as well as to try.  Thank you Trudi and Sherry.

So I'd like to encourage all FHSA members to look at other chapters and there meetings.  I also want to invite all visitors to Arizona as well as residents who are not FHSA members, to visit one or two chapters and enjoy the benefits of sitting with others who share our passion.

Tuesday's Tip - Organize Business Cards Received

Did you come home from FGS or another conference with a stack of business cards and you can't put a face with the name?  Do you exchange business cards and then can’t remember who the person is and what common surnames you share?  Did you forget what you had in common, what you talked about, or what session(s) you both attended?  In the past I have.

The FGS Conference in Springfield was different.  I exchanged cards with many attendees.  But instead of just keeping the cards filed until I returned home,  every night, I made a note of what this person and I talked about, whether it was a surname, a society issue, or just general genealogy information.  A couple of great people I shared meals with, both of us being singles and deciding to share a table.  I noted all of that, or at least as much as I could remember after a long day at the conference. 

At past conferences, I wasn’t as diligent in keeping track of the great people I met, and so I am not able to easily contact them with information that may be of interest to both of us.  I mentioned this to my daughter and son-in-law after the conference and they both stated that they often write on the back of the new card special information.  They do this as soon after they exchange the card as is politely possible to do.  I think I may try this next time.  I can always make notes during a session before I start taking notes or put the new card away.

I’ve only been home 6 days and I still need to organize some of the cards I received. But I know who they are.  And I promised a couple of new friends some information.  Now I just have to get it ready to send.  That will be next week’s project. 

So, my suggestion is to decide the best way for you to record enough information about the person you receive a card from so that you will benefit from the meeting at a later date.  And, you will know who you promised what information so that the next time you meet, you won’t be embarrassed about your short lapse of memory (senior moment?)

And if you have other ideas, please share them.  I’m open to new ideas.

Thankful Thursday - FGS Conference Volunteers

Thank you FGS and ISGS volunteers for a great FGS conference in Springfield.  Also, thank you Speakers for the great presentations.  I learned so much.  Now I need time to organize the information so that I can benefit from it all.

I had a great time and I know many, many others did to. So, thank you All for your efforts.