Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Listen to me on the Exactly Enough Time Podcast

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I’m thrilled to be the guest on the most recent episode of Stacy Julian’s Exactly Time podcast. The episode, which was published yesterday, is called Janine Adams: Share with Confidence. In our conversation, Stacy and I discuss getting started with family history research and  organizing our research, along with sharing genealogy information with others, and favorite family stories.

I’ve been a fangirl of Stacy since I heard her speak at RootsTech in 2020 and if you’ve been reading this blog awhile you know that I write about her How to BEGIN with the Box methodology and how I’ve applied it to my own inherited documents and memorabilia. (You can peruse my posts about Stacy by clicking this link, if you’re interested.)

Stacy is a wonderfully positive person with an enthusiasm that’s contagious. I hope you’ll give her podcast a listen–she has a lot to offer the family history community!

Registration open for RootsTech 2023 (in-person and virtual!)

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Interested in attending RootsTech 2023? You have a decision to make. After two years of a virtual conference, RootsTech will be back in 2023 as an in-person event. But the organizers have taken it to a new level: In addition to the traditional in-person conference they will also offer a full virtual experience, with over 200 on-demand classes.

The conference will be held March 2 to 4, 2023 in Salt Lake City, Utah. You can register (for either in person or virtual) on the registration page. The fee for the in-person conference is $98 and registration for the virtual conference is free.

I have to admit, I’m torn. I love RootsTech and all the energy that comes from being with thousands of fellow genealogy enthusiasts and attending classes live and in person. Despite my best intentions, I did not take full advantage of the offerings of the last two virtual RootsTech conferences. (The good news is that it’s not too late to see last year’s sessions!)

I attended (and spoke at) RootsTech 2020, which was held at the very end of February right before the world shut down. I didn’t get sick. I’ve had COVID once and am triple boosted. But I’m still a little wary of attending a large conference. And, of course, with travel expenses, attending the conference in person is a bigger financial commitment. So I may register for the virtual event today and give myself a deadline to decide about attending in person.

How about you? Are you planning to register for either option? If I decide to attend in person, I’ll post here and perhaps we can have a meet up.

Sharing with confidence

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I had a wonderful conversation yesterday with Stacy Julian for her podcast, Exactly Enough Time. We talked about family history, organizing and sharing our family stories. The episode will be published later this month and I will definitely post a link.

Part of our conversation has stuck with me and I wanted to share it here. We talked a little about balancing the desire to share our research with the need to make sure what we share is accurate. In my opinion, it’s important to be confident about the accuracy of your research before sharing it. That doesn’t mean you need to write a fully-sourced history before you can share anything. It just means that what you share should be sourced and reliable.

Here’s what I do to make sure my research can be trusted:

I ensure that every fact that is entered into my database in Reunion has a source attached to it. And I look at every source critically before entering it into my database.

With those two procedures in place, I know that I can share everything in my database with confidence.

I encourage you to let go of the idea that you can’t share any of your research until it’s “finished” (whatever that means). Instead, just make sure your research is reliable so you can share any of it with confidence.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

(Free) Wikitree conference coming up!

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Yesterday, I sat in on Amy Johnson Crow’s Live YouTube video covering news in the genealogy world. (If you’re not on her mailing list so you hear about these events, I encourage you to sign up!) One of the things she mentioned that I wanted to share with you is Wikitree Day coming up on November 4 and 5. This free genealogy symposium starts on Friday, November 4 at 8 am eastern and runs through 8 pm eastern on Saturday, November 5.

The first day covers general genealogy topics with familiar (and excellent) speakers like Amy Johnson Crow, Thomas MacEntee, Marian Burk Wood and Maureen. Here’s the link for the first day’s schedule. There are one, two or three speakers to choose from in each time slot. The presentations are pre-recorded, which is how they can present them through the night. I noticed that some are repeated; I think this is a great way to reach people in various time zones around the world!

The second day focuses more on Wikitree itself. I have to admit that I’ve never used Wikitree, but Amy extols its virtues and I’m definitely interested in learning more about this collaborative family tree. The second day offers to separate video tracks, so there is plenty to watch. Here’s the schedule.

The conference is free and registration is required. Here’s the link to register. I just registered!