Organize Your Family History

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March 30 x 30 challenge starts tomorrow!

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I wanted to give you a one day heads up that I’m starting another 30 x 30 challenge. For the month of March, I encourage you to join me in committing to doing 30 minutes of genealogy research (or organizing or whatever you want to do) each day for 30 days.

I’ve decided that I’m going to spend my 30 x 30 challenge taking RootsTech classes. RootsTech 2022 starts on March 3 but until then I can watch RootsTech 2021 classes. As I wrote in last week’s post, I’m disappointed with myself that I didn’t watch more RootsTech 2021 classes in the year between the two virtual conferences.

My plan is to take at least one class per day, more if they’re short. I hope to spend at least 30 minutes a day watching RootsTech classes. I think this will be a great way for me to make sure I take advantage of at least some of the great education offered!

Please let me know in the comments if you’re interested in joining this month’s challenge. It doesn’t have to be about RootsTech–it can be about anything genealogy related that works for you!

RootsTech starts in 6 days: Start planning now!

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The RootsTech 2022 website is now live! That means you have just under a week to plan your RootsTech experience by creating a playlist of the classes you want to watch. You can also take note of the main stage speeches and mark them in your calendar if you want to watch them live.

While my 2021 playlist is gone, I was excited to discover that the 2021 talks are still available for viewing. You can find them by clicking on Sessions and scrolling down in the Filters area on the left side to “Year.” Select 2021 and you’ll see that there are 1767 talks available to view now.

You can also filter by topic, research location, speakers or other filters and then within those results filter by year. You can add both 2021 and 2022 classes to your playlist (or watch the 2021 classes now). I don’t know  whether the 2021 classes will be still be available when RootsTech 2022 starts next week. As I mentioned in my post last week, I tend to think they’ll be removed.

For sessions that will be presented live, the time is listed for the session on the search result. My understanding is that the pre-recorded 2022 sessions will be made available when RootsTech starts, which is Thursday, March 3, 2022 at 9 am Central Standard Time (GMT -6). That’s 11:00 AM in Rio, 6:00 PM in London; 12:00 PM in Tokyo and 2:00 am [Thursday] in Sydney.

Look for download links for class syllabi at the bottom of each class listing. Based on my poking around, it looks to me like  syllabi for 2022 classes won’t appear until the conference starts. But you can download syllabi for 2021 classes you’re interested in now.

The array of classes available is truly impressive. And I know it can feel overwhelming. Personally, I’ll get past that overwhelmed feeling by planning ahead and creating a playlist. While I know I can watch these classes for about a year, I’m going to try hard to take in RootsTech 2022 content while the conference is going on, so I can be part of the global experience and so I actually watch the classes. I found that I did not watch the 2021 content I intended to watch (though I did watch some last week!) and that disappoints me.

Once the conference starts, I’ll be eager to find my Relatives at Rootstech, visit the Virtual Expo Hall and check out the chatrooms for the classes I’m interested in.

If you have questions about RootsTech, the FAQ has lots of great information. You might find the post I wrote about the 2021 virtual conference helpful. I plan to write something similar once this year’s conference begins and I can check out the features.

If you haven’t registered yet, just go to www.rootstech.org and click on Register. It’s free and easy! Let me know in the conference whether you’re planning to attend. Who knows, we might find out we’re related!

 

 

My top five reasons to organize digitally

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Regular readers of this blog know that I prefer organizing my genealogy files digitally. I almost never print anything I find online and things that come to me on paper get scanned and organized on my hard drive.

Today, I wanted to simply share the top reasons for my preference for digital organizing of genealogy records:

  1. It’s more portable. I love that my research is with me wherever I go. I use Reunion genealogy software on my Mac and attach my source documents to each source record. The data is stored in Dropbox and easily accessible on my phone through the ReunionTouch app.
  2. It’s easier on my eyes. Early on, I would print census records on 8.5″ x 11″ paper and have to use a magnifying glass to read them. My eyes aren’t getting any younger and I really appreciate that I can just zoom in on documents in Preview, the app I use to read pdfs and jpgs.
  3. It takes less effort to file digitally. It is so much easier to rename a file, then drag it file to a folder on my computer than it it so open a file cabinet drawer and locate and open a folder and file (or open a binder to the right place and insert a piece of paper).
  4. It creates less clutter. I don’t have a pile of genealogy papers waiting to be filed. I don’t have unruly paper files or binders. I just have a nice neat hard drive. (True confession: I do, sometimes, I have a tidy digital backlog of files waiting to be processed into my software.)
  5. It’s less expensive. Since I’m not printing documents I find online, I save money on paper and toner. And I may save a tree or two while I’m at it.

I could go on; there are more than five reasons I love digital organization for my genealogy research! An important note: since I know that hard drives can fail, I backup my genealogy files in three places (Dropbox, an external hard drive and in the cloud via Backblaze.) A good back-up routine is critical.

If you’re interested in making the switch, check out my blog post Getting started going digital. And if you’d like a deep dive into exactly how I organize my research digitally, you can my purchase my Orderly Roots guide, How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow.

January 30 x 30 wrap up

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Another 30 x 30 challenge is behind us. Did it help you get more genealogy research or genealogy organizing done? Please share in the comments!

I had a good month. I missed two days but did research the other 28 days. On four of those days, my research consisted of attending Amy Johnson Crow’s All About Ancestry webinars, which were 90 minutes to two hours long, so that helped with my daily average. Over the course of the month, I averaged 44 minutes a day for a total of 22 hours of research. That feels great!

One of my goals was to eliminate my backlog of downloaded documents I needed to process. On January 1, I had 77 documents in the backlog. During the month, I downloaded 23 new documents and processed a total of 90 documents, leaving me with a backlog of 10 documents still to process. Hooray! I had a lot of fun and learned a lot about my ancestors.

If you participated in the challenge, please leave a comment. Did the challenge help you get more done than you otherwise would have? Are you pleased with your progress?

I’ll probably do another challenge in March, so keep an eye out!