Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

RootsTech early bird deadline extended

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RootsTech 2015 registration is openIf you’ve been on the fence about attending RootsTech 2015, to be held in Salt Lake City February 12 to 14, now’s the time to commit. They’ve just extended the early bird price of $159 for the three-day conference. You can grab it until Monday, January 26.

To get more information and to register, go to the RootsTech website.

I attended last year and loved it and will be attending again this year. I think $159 for the level of education you get there is a gigantic bargain. (By contrast, I pay about $600 for registration for my organizers’ professional conferences.)

If you decide to go, please let me know in the comments. Perhaps we can meet!

FTU’s week-long genealogy organizing course

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organize your genealogy in a weekIf you’re reading this blog, I know you’re interested in organizing your genealogy research. That’s why I wanted to let you know about an online course I just signed up for: Organize Your Genealogy in a Week, from Family Tree University. It’s being taught January 24 to 31 by Denise Levenick, The Family Curator. I’m a big fan of Denise’s blog and her book, How to Archive Family Keepsakes.

As a professional organizer and genealogy enthusiast, I have lots of ideas about how to organize genealogy research. But I’m very excited to learn what Denise has to teach and I’m sure I’ll pick up great ideas. Plus I’m sure I’ll benefit from the questions course participants ask Denise.

The workshop tuition is $129.99. It takes the form of six 30- to 60-minute videos and two written lessons, to watch/read at your leisure, along with expert advice from Denise in the message boards.

If you plan to attend as well, let me know in the comments!

Another great resource: free newsletters

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weeklygenealogistI’m a big fan of the genealogy resources I pay for. Ancestry.com, Fold3.com, Family Tree magazine and Family Tree University have all been worth the money I paid for them and I’m lucky that I have the resources to budget for them.

One reason I’m glad to pay for the subscription sites is that they provide one-stop shopping, in a sense. They’re chock full of information so I can search away at one site for hours.

But there are many free resources available that a genealogy researcher could certainly keep busy without every spending a dime.

For me, anyway, sometimes the challenge lies in finding (and remembering) these resources. One great source for them, I’ve found, are genealogy society newsletters and newsletters from luminaries in the genealogy field.

When the newsletters land in my inbox, I give them a quick scan. And then I move them into a family history research email folder, waiting to come up in a search if I need them. Since I have an inbox zero policy, I do at least glance at each newsletter before filing it.

Recently that paid off when I quickly looked over The Weekly Genealogist, the newsletter for the New England Historic Genealogical Society. It had a spotlight on Washington State genealogical resources, including a link to the searchable website of the Masonic Memorial Park in Tumwater, Washington, where, it turns out, my great grandmother and great grandfather, Hattie and Elmer Adams, are buried. I love that I received Pacific Northwest resources via a New England Society!

Here are  some of the free newsletters I subscribe to.

What valuable free newsletters am I missing? I’d love to hear about your favorites.

Find genealogy success with Genealogy Intensive from Thomas MacEntee

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One of the things I struggle with in my genealogy research is finding the time to do the research, staying focused, and avoiding overwhelm. Internet communities and research trips can provide camaraderie and support but, for the most part, genealogy research is a pretty solitary endeavor.

That’s why I was really excited to receive an email yesterday from Thomas MacEntee of Hack Genealogy and GeneaBloggers announcing his new Genealogy Intensive™ online workshops. (Maybe you received it too.)

The six-week workshop is limited to 13 participants, all focused on a common goal. (Each individual workshop has a theme.) The participants provide support, feedback and accountability to one another and are led by an expert coach. There are assignments and weekly online meetings. The first Genealogy Intensive, called The Write Stuff will be led by Lisa Alzo and is for people who are interested in building their their family history writing skills. It starts October 13. The price for the Genealogy Intensive is just $129 (right now it’s discounted to $99), which seems like a huge bargain to me.

I know from experience that this type of camaraderie, accountability, guidance and focus can reap huge benefits. I’ve taken similar courses in different contexts. In fact, I started this blog as a result of a similar workshop in 2012 called Why Not Now? that spurred me to figure out the technology side of setting up the blog, something I’d been wanting to do for ages. After the two-week-long Why Not Now? workshop in April 2012, the blog was well on its way. It went live in June 2012 and has been going strong ever since.

The other reason I’m so excited by Genealogy Intensive concept is that I’m a big fan of Thomas MacEntee. I listened to him raptly for four hours as he lectured at the Genealogy Society of Southern Illinois’ one-day conference  in August and I love his website GeneaBloggers. I’m very grateful for the support he provides to genealogy blogger and for his generosity in sharing his knowledge about genealogy.

If you’re interested in putting your family history into writing and feel you could use some instruction and encouragement, I urge you to sign up! I won’t be signing up for this particular intensive (I’m a professional writer), but I eagerly await the schedule of 2015 Intensives that Thomas tells me will be coming out in the next few weeks.