I live in Missouri. California barely makes an appearance in my genealogy. Yet I’m a happy member of the Southern California Genealogical Society (SCGS). Why? Because of their amazing educational opportunities, available and pertinent to all.

SCGS offers twice-monthly webinars from big names in genealogy. For $35 a year, I became a member so that I could watch the webinars on demand. But here’s the great thing: You can watch the webinar for free, if you watch it being streamed live. However, you must register in advance. To do that, go to the webinars page, then click on the title of the webinar you’re interested in. That will take you to a registration page.

On Saturday, November 7, Cyndi Ingle (of Cyndi’s List fame) will be presenting Building a Digital Research Plan at 10 am Pacific time. Here’s a description of that webinar:

Using Internet databases and catalogs we will build a research plan to answer a specific research question. We will walk through the process of planning, researching for the plan, and keeping track of what has been researched.

I think that sounds tremendous (it’s right up my alley). If you invest $35 a year to be a member, you can view the webinar any time you want and you can also view archived webinars. You could have your own mini-genealogy conference in the comfort of your home.

Speaking of conferences, SCGS sponsors the Genealogy Jamboree in June in Burbank, California. I attended in 2015 and it was excellent. The webinar series is an extension of the Jamboree.

I am so grateful that the SCGS offers resources to folks all over the world. Membership truly feels like the deal of the century!