Visiting our Shores

dsc05018One of the great things about having an overseas visitor stay is showing them around our great city of Sydney and state of New South Wales.

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Having visited several historic churches in Sydney, the convict barracks, the mint, Sydney Hospital and the Mitchell Library, we have just spent the last few days on the road showing our Edenborough cousin from England the fabulous wineries of Orange, the historic villages of Carcoar and Millthorpe, the amazing road circuit of Mt Panorama at Bathurst and the scenic Blue Mountains.

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The coming week will see us visit several more Sydney icons including Cockatoo Island on the Harbour, Taronga Zoo and Manly, as well as day trips down the coast to Bundeena and Kiama before our visitor moves on to another fabulous Australian city, Adelaide.

RootsTech 2017

rootstech-logoWith the announcement of the official opening of registrations for RootsTech 2017, came a bright and colourful new website and publication of sessions and labs available throughout the conference.

The 4-day conference will offer attendees a full line-up of inspiring and well-known keynote speakers with more than 200 Breakout Sessions covering DNA, Tools, Photos, Stories, Organising and Discovery, including hands-on computer labs taught by industry professionals and leaders.

And then there is the interactive activities and exhibitors in the Expo Hall. Along with Innovation Alley, Discovery Zone and the Demo Theatre, RootsTech 2017 will see the introduction of two new events in the Expo Hall:

Coaches’ Corner will provide one-on-one mentoring from an expert genealogist; and

Heirloom Show and Tell where you can bring in any small item or photo of a large item you’ve been wondering about, and they’ll tell you about it.

Early bird discount pricing is available for a limited time with 4-day passes at just $159 and $189 for the RootsTech plus Innovator Summit pass. Passes for the Getting Started track start at $49 for a single day and $69 for a limited 3-day pass. All passes include access to the popular expo hall and morning keynote sessions.

Exercises 5, 6 and 7 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Today, I find that I’m able to whizz through the next three exercises for various reasons.

For Exercise 5, I am, in fact, going to skip the exercise completely until I have grown a readership and can return to complete the exercise.

Onward to Exercise 6 where the challenge was “less about ‘doing’ and more about ‘learning’ and increasing your knowledge of blogging”. However, this exercise only required reading through a collection of helpful articles presented by ten successful  bloggers. This turned out to be a great exercise and one where I found some very useful and pertinent ideas that could easily be incorporated into my own blog writing.

And finally, Exercise 7 which was about writing a link post.  While there are many ways to write a link post, doing so should only be undertaken if linking to something of value. In his overview of the exercise, Darren Rowse, offers six types of link posts to consider:

  • Build upon the points of others
  • Take the opposite point of view
  • Build a resource on a topic
  • Speed linking
  • One question interviews
  • Suggest further reading and give examples

I’ve chosen to build a resource on a topic for this exercise and presently there is no better topic for me than RootsTech. I’m keen to read up on blogs relating to past RootsTech events that will prepare me for my upcoming role as an official ambassador at RootsTech 2017.

Among the wonderful assortment of posts returned by Dr Google for previous RootsTech conferences were some great reads by well-known genie bloggers including Thomas MacEntee writing for Geneabloggers, Kirsty Gray from Family Wise and Australia’s very own Jill Ball of GeniAus. However, the crème de la crème had to be Randy Seaver’s RootsTech 2016 Conference Blog Compendium. I know I am going to be very busy over the next few days reading through all of the articles posted by 73 separate bloggers that Randy was able to source.

Exercise 4 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

This exercise involved spending time on a successful blog in my niche so that I might observe the content, reader engagement, design, and monetization.

With genealogy, there are just so many great blogs out there that those I want to read regularly are added to my RSS FeedReader so that I can catch up with them when I have time. Sometimes this is weekly other times it is closer to monthly.

Picking one blog to scrutinise was difficult but I eventually settled on the FamilySearch blog. While not a money-making blog, I felt that it was one that is more than worthy of being a regular read.

The blog covers an inordinate amount of material taking in everything from community projects, new records, how to as well as why, photos and family history stories and, of course, everything to do with RootsTech.

New posts are uploaded every couple of days by either the team at FamilySearch or by guest bloggers and cover all levels of genealogy material for the beginners to the professional.

While the posts I looked at didn’t generate a lot of comment traffic, what comment there was showed that FamilySearch are certainly doing things right.

Tools and mediums used by the site include linking to their Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and G+ sites with options to subscribe to their blog via newsletters and RSS feeds.

But probably the best thing about the blog for me is the design – it is clean with plenty of white space and requires minimal interaction to move around.

Exercise 3 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Today’s exercise is about promoting your blog with suggestions that include asking other bloggers to link to your blog, posting to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter or sending out newsletters.

I can honestly say that asking someone to link to my blog is not something that sits comfortably with me. After all, their opinions may turn out to be not the same as mine. And if I felt I needed to remove their link, I expect I would feel uncomfortable advising them I had removed their link.

At this stage, I’m also not keen to start sending out newsletters.

I guess I will have to go with the suggestion to share posts on other social messaging sites such as Facebook and Twitter. I find this a far more comfortable suggestion and one in which I can hold a degree of control over what is promoted.

My blog was designed using WordPress and as a newbie to designing and operating a blog I’m enjoying learning new ways to develop the site. Looking around at compatible programs for WordPress, I thought I would try the automatic “Add a Link to Facebook” plugin. Sadly, I’m finding the instructions a tad technical.

If I haven’t set up the plugin successfully, I will have to remain content, for now, to manually add links to my posts on Facebook. At least, until I can get someone more tech savvy to show me what to do.

Exercise 2 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Last week I received confirmation that I have been accepted as an official Ambassador for RootsTech 2017. After doing a little happy dance through the house, I settled down and thought about what I would do in my role and realised I could take the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge one step further and use the program to promote and discuss everything RootsTech.

Today’s exercise is to write a list post. List posts can be an effective and popular tool for bloggers – eliciting easily scannable material for readers, they can be short and to the point yet comprehensive and succinct.

­­So what do I hope to see and do at RootsTech 2017:

  • Hands-on workshops
  • Interactive classes
  • Collaborative panel discussions
  • Multimedia presentations
  • Prize giving
  • One-on-one interviews
  • Networking
  • Technology advancements
  • Creative genealogy methods
  • Inspirational speakers
  • Catch-up with old and new associates
  • And in the words of Jill Ball, plenty of geneagaggle!

31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Late in July I came across an online blogger who was undertaking the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge put forth by Darren Rowse of Problogger. Now this was something I could see merit in doing having started a genealogy blog late last year.

I immediately jumped in and purchased a copy of Darren’s e-book and, after reading the first couple of chapters, made the decision to dedicate the month of August to undertake the challenge. But as Robert Burns famously wrote in 1785 – The best laid schemes of mice and men, Go often askew and now it’s August 29 and I still haven’t started!

However, that will all change today. Instead of waiting for another 31-day month, I am going to make a start and continue working through the program – whether it be one post per day or several.

So to get the ball rolling …

Exercise 1 of 31-Days to Build a Better Blog

Write an Elevator Pitch – Wikipedia defines an elevator pitch as a short summary which can easily define an idea for a product, service, organisation or event that can be delivered in the time spent during an elevator ride.

I see my genealogy blog elevator pitch as being:

To attract and interest readers with personal family stories and genealogical research tips and news.

RootsTech 2017

February 2017 will see me fly off to the US for attendance at the annual RootsTech convention in Salt Lake City. I have wanted to attend RootsTech for a number of years so I am very excited to finally be able to attend, physically, IN PERSON!!! The flights are now booked as well as the accommodation.

Rootstech

Hosted by FamilySearch, RootsTech is hailed as the largest family history conference in the world. Between the daily keynote speakers (that have included First Lady Laura Bush and Donny Osmond in the past), and an Expo hall packed with interactive and innovative tools for genealogy, there will also be over 200 exciting classes to attend, and evening entertainment for winding down and relaxing.

Three other major events are :

  • RootsTech Showdown
  • RootsTech Family Discovery Day

And it looks like I have picked the perfect year to attend and listen to some great speakers including Kirsty Gray, Helen V Smith, Thomas MacEntee and Dear Myrtle & Cousin Russ. It will also be an opportunity to catch up with several overseas genie mates and entertaining, RootsTech Ambassador, Jill Ball – organiser of the Commonwealth Cousins casual dinner and who, like me, hails from Sydney, Australia.

When: 8-11 February 2017

Where: Salt Palace Convention Centre, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Family Finder DNA

Several years ago I undertook a mtDNA test and, honestly, I am still not any wiser at understanding the results. However, recently, I upgraded my test sample and today I received my Family Finder results from FamilyTreeDNA.

Interesting to read that I am 56% Scandinavian, 41% Western and Central European and only 3% British.

JF ethnic makeup

The bulk of my ancestry that I have traced back to the 17th and 18th Centuries is made up from Scotland, Ireland, and England with a very small percentage from the Hessen district in Germany so I have no idea why the Scandinavian and Western and Central European figures are so high.

I now need to track down a simplified guide to DNA so I can sit back and study these new results.

 

 

Photo Scanning

Over the past few weeks I have been busily scanning my large photographic collection. Not so much the genealogical photos, more the holiday snaps taken over a lifetime.

1992 - my first overseas trip

1992 – my first overseas trip

I made the decision to do this now after watching a friend preparing to downsize and realised that at some stage in the future I probably will also need to downsize. So, rather than waiting until it becomes a major rush job, I’m taking my time scanning all my large and heavy pre digital photo albums to create new smaller photobooks, the type that are now available through many companies such as Clickonprint etc, as well as wading through the various boxes of photos that didn’t make it into albums previously. Most of these I will happily just store on my computer.

Until last week, the process of scanning has been extremely slow – scanning one or two photos at a time then having to manually crop to separate them. However, last week I discovered my  friend is able to stick a whole selection of 4 or 5 photos on her scanner bed which will scan and separate the photos as one action. I couldn’t believe that in all the years of my computer use, I wasn’t aware there was software out there that could scan and separate at the same time!

After searching the internet for available software programs I settled on purchasing  the download program AutoSplitter from Chimera Creative Studio. At only US$19  it has radicalised my scanning. Whereas before I would tire of scanning after 10 or 20 photos, I am now whizzing through my stash at around 100 photos in the same time.  And the scanned images are very good quality (in fact, sad to say, better than my original scanning software which I had stuck with for years).

And one thing that this whole process has achieved, is the bringing back of wonderful memories of times past.