Friday, June 7, 2013

SCGS Genealogy Jamboree Day One - Education Galore

Day One of the SCGS Genealogy Jsmboree is over for me...except for the evening exploits.  But today was about education and learning, and I enjoyed it.

Some highlights:

*  Down to the Blogger Lounge early (like 7 a.m.), and no one else was there but the breakfast bar guy, so we enjoyed our muffin (me) and bagel (Linda).  I went to my first session at 8 a.m. and Linda went off to do her registration volunteer work with Jane and Marilyn.

*  My first class was Connie Moretti and Lisa Schumacher's presentation on "DIY: WDYTYA.  "This was inspiring and I'm amazed that a relatively small society would be brave enough to execute such an excellent community event.  I'm not amazed that they succeeded, because this group is very talented and organized.  The South Bay Cities planned, organized and executed a Who Do You Think You Are? event to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the city of Torrance, California, featuring the family history of Jim and Beverly Posy (a first family of Torrance), Frank and Mrs. Scotto (current Mayor of Torrance), and Michael Shafer (a noted chef in a Torrance restaurant), in a two hour program before 500 people in a tech-friendly auditorium, and made money doing it.  Connie and Lisa described the planning, logistics, preparation for family history, the research itself, the production and the follow-up.  This program showing how they did it is excellent in itself, and Southern California societies should consider having them speak about it.  Bravo!

*  I rushed out of that class and caught John Phillip Colletta's first talk on "Our National Archives: The Astounding Institution and How to Use It."  It was also an astounding, and funny, presentation. John described the structure of NARA, the organization of the Archives (Record Groups and Series), and the Finding Aids available (Access to Archival Databases, Archival Research Catalog, published guides, catalogs, Preliminary Inventories, Descriptive Pamphlets, Lists and Checklists, etc.).  He then went through two examples of how to find one record amongst the billions of pages in the Archives!  A virtuoso performance.

*  At 10:45 a.m., I went to the World Genealogy Roundtable, which had 20 tables for specific topics, with discussion leaders at each table.  I attended the New York/New Jersey Research table hosted by Norma Storrs-Keating (of GSNOCC).  She was very knowledgeable about the subject, and brought books, the FHL Research Guides and other resources to help the attendees.  I asked a question about early land records in New Jersey and how to obtain the wills listed in the New Jersey Archives books.

*  Then it was lunchtime, since I wanted to be ready for the Exhibit Hall opening.  I had a hamburger and was ready to go into the Exhibit Hall when it opened.  I walked the whole thing, talked to quite a few exhibitors, and took my cell phone up to the room to charge it.

*  Before 1:30 p.m., I went to the classroom for Geoff Rasmussen's "What's New in Legacy Family Tree 8."  The program is not released yet, but will be before the end of 2013, and probably sooner rather than later.  I took notes...and asked Geoff if I could share them with my readers; he graciously said I could, but I note that I've only seen a few of the changes.  He has three more presentations this weekend with more revelations.  The basic screen views and navigation are essentially the same as Legacy 7.5.  The typeface and backgrounds are different, and there are no dropdown menus from the menu bar.  Rather, clicking on a menu item opens a different toolbar for each menu item.   The Pedigree View has changed a bit, with two lines for the name and lifespan.  One excellent change is Problem Indicators - notifications that show a red indicator for a person, and popup windows that describe a potential problem.  He also described a Shared Event feature (like Census-household), where one source can be easily added to a whole household.  There are several new toolbar icons, and several new reports (origins of a group, or migration of a group).  They have added Source Quality measures.  Geoff said that Jamboree attendees can buy Legacy 8, with a book, for $20 as a show special, but the disk is for Legacy 7.5 at this time (buyers upgrade for free when Version 8 is released).  A friend noted that if I bought it, I could read about all of the changes in Legacy 8 in the book!

*  Another walk around the Exhibit Hall before going to Judy G. Russell's talk on "The Ethical Genealogist."  I am awed by Judy's presentations skills and this talk was excellent.  I didn't take notes because I didn't want to get something wrong.  She had several examples for each of her main points - Tell the Truth, Play Nice with Others, and Don't Tell Tales Out of School.  In addition to the examples, she provided summaries of codes of ethics at BCG, APG and NGS.

*  Whew, I'm done for the day.  I rushed up to the room to get the laptop and get down to the Bloggers Lounge to write this post before all of the bloggers go to the bar, and we'll eat dinner with somebody, I'm sure.

I've been real happy with the Jamboree 2013 App on my iPhone and Samsung tablet.  The class locations and the syllabus pages for each class are on the App, and for each class, I can take notes on them (I use the tablet) and then email the notes to myself.

Saturday is another full day of classes, so I probably won't blog about them until Saturday night.  I need to start taking pictures too!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/06/jamboree-day-1-education-galore.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

3 comments:

LDC said...

Is the SCGS Jamboree held at the same place every year? I want to start making plans for next year now! :-)

Unknown said...

I attended Judy Russell's Ethical Genealogist presentation via the Jamboree live-stream and agree that it was an excellent presentation. Judy's passion and expertise regarding legal issues as they apply to genealogy are highly valued and welcome whenever she blogs or presents at conferences.

Thank you to SCGS and Ancestry.com for providing several Jamboree sessions each day for free viewing via live-stream.

GeneGinny said...

Ditto what Doug said. I, too, listened to Judy's presentation via live-stream and it was excellent. Kudos to SCGS and Ancestry for making it possible for all of us to learn!