Saturday, September 30, 2006

CVGS Program Today on Female Ancestors

In the Chula Vista Genealogical Society's effort to draw potential new members to our society, we have Saturday programs 3 times a year on the 5th Saturdays - the ones on which no one else schedules a monthly meeting. Our thought is that we may be able to draw local genealogy researchers who work during the week when we have our regular society meetings. We had one of these Saturday meetings today.

The speaker was myself - we had a committed speaker drop out several months ago. The subject was "Pursuing Your Elusive Female Ancestors."

The presentation described each type of record that might help identify a maiden name (e.g., census, vital, land, cemetery, probate, pension, church, home, newspaper, etc), plus provided locations where the resources might be found in traditional resources (libraries, local societies, courthouses, FHL films, etc.) and Internet resources (databases, web pages, etc.). I also provided examples from my own research of many of the types of records. It went a bit long, but that was because I put too many good examples into the presentation.

This is the first presentation that I've done in a PowerPoint format (but I used overheads since I don't have a laptop or projector). I like the format, but without a laptop I can't do the fancy things - but I don't like the fades, the click every line, and other PP glitzy features anyway.

I made a master slide with a large title area, a picture in one corner (of my mother, her mother and grandmother) a footer with my name and the presentation title. Each slide had an action title at the top, and the bullet points addressed the issue. I included the traditional and Internet resource discussions in my verbal presentation, but not on the slides. The handout had them, however.

I enjoy the challenge of preparing and making the presentation. I'm learning to reduce word count on my slides (my training was as an engineer where we had to include everything we had to say on the slides, since they got passed around our management and the customer's management) and to use more pictures and examples.

I need to add a few more examples, especially in land records, modify some of the text which was awkward and take out a few of the examples which were not real pertinent. It was a decent job, IMHO, but it could be better.

I'll be happy when I can use a laptop and a projector - the darn overhead flimsies for my HP inkjet printer are expensive - about 75 cents each.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So,Randy. No comments on this post.Did you mention any of the audience by name in the post? Did you email and tell them they were mentioned? did you link it to any support material to the lecture? did you link the post to any other blogs or sites? Did you write it like a news story or popular review/ how many names were included/ Did it focus on the participants. All good questions.
Any of these strategies is supposed to help.