Saturday, June 8, 2013

SCGS Genealogy Jamboree - Day Two

Day Two at the SCGS Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank, California was full of classes, exhibit hall wandering and some blogging.  What else is new?

*  Was in the Bloggers Lounge at 7 a.m. for breakfast, and checked my email and blogs on the iPhone.  Other bloggers gradually wandered in and we talked...what else do we do?

*  My first class for the day was Craig Scott's "Researching a War of 1812 Ancestor."  Unfortunately, my email with my notes, sent from the tablet, got messed up somehow!  All I remember is that Craig said that you are usually looking for one record in billions of pieces of paper which may or not be indexed or online.  He walked us through how the National Archives are organized, know the name, birth year and residence at the time of the War of 1812, then check the online resources at Fold3, Ancestry and FamilySearch for entries in the Compiled Military Service Records, pension files, and a number of other files.  There are several lineage societies that may be helpful, such as the National Society, United States Daughters of 1812. Craig provided a list of records to check, including courts martial, soldiers who died in the war, bounty land, officers, manuscript collections, organizational records, unit records, state and private claims, etc.

*  My second class at 10 a.m. was with Geoff Rasmussen titled "Organizing, Researching, Mapping, Sourcing and Sharing in Legacy Family Tree 8.0."  Geoff briefly reviewed some of the changes he showed in his first talk yesterday, and then demonstrated some of the additions and changes in Version 8.0.  The ones I noted were more pedigree chart color coding, the Person page sorts events by date, the Media Gallery can include web page links, there will be a "master" re-link media button, a family bow-tie chart was added, the family file statistics report will have many more lines with database data, statistics can be graphed, and added children and spouses will be listed in date order (as long as the family members have a birth or marriage date).  I hope I remembered those correctly, I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.  I'm sure I missed some items.  I asked about FamilySearch Family Tree integration, and Geoff said it would be included in Version 8.  Cool.

*  I had a quick lunch (hot dog, apple) and went to the Blogger Summit class at 11:30, moderated by Thomas MacEntee with Paula Stuart-Warren, Judy G. Russell, Denise Levenick and CeCe Moore as panelists.  They answered a series of questions, and then some from the audience.  There was some tweeting going on too.  We took the annual Genea-Blogger picture after this session in the hotel lobby.

*  I visited the Blogger Lounge, then the Tech Zone to write the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, and wandered the exhibit hall (I even took some pictures).

*  The 2 p.m. class was with Lisa Louise Cooke and "The Google Earth Military March Game Show."  This was interesting and fun.  While demonstrating how a user can embed images, videos, webpages, etc. into Google Earth to make it a "show," Lisa had a series of 15 questions about U.S. military events to challenge two sets of contestants.  Each panel received a point for answering the questions correctly, as determined by Lisa clicking a link within the show from a list.  The panelists put their answer on a whiteboard to show to the audience.  I loved it!  The four contestants received prizes, and, because I kept score, Lisa gifted me with a prize also.

*  I hustled over to the Pavilion to attend Judy G. Russell's class on "No Vitals? No Problem! Building a Family Through Circumstantial Research."  This was a case study wrapped around information about the Genealogical Proof Standard.  Judy started with a person's name in the 1850 census, and 18-year old named Isabella Robinson (sic) perhaps married with two small children and a father-in-law, and using GPS principles put her into a birth family and into her own family by working her way through many records, using the GPS to analyze and sort out evidence, and coming to a near-certain conclusion.

*  I was done with classes at 4:30 p.m. - so I went to my room, got the laptop, and downloaded my pictures and wrote my picture blog post on Genea-Musings, plus talked to Connie Moretti and several others at the table.  I went to the room at 6 p.m., and we came down to meet Donna Peterson and we had dinner at the hotel restaurant again (I had chicken pot pie again).

*  After dinner, it was back to the Blogger Lounge table with the laptop to write this post and update the Jamboree Compendium post.  I started at 8 p.m., and it's 10:30 now.  Tom Kemp came by and we talked for 30 minutes, then Pam Journey came and we discussed things, and then Bruce and Laurie Buzbee dropped by.  That was fun.  I finally completed this blog post too.  I think.  I'm too tired now to remember it all.

So I went to 5 of the 6 class opportunities, and have now attended 10 of the possible 12 class sessions.

Sunday is the last day of Jamboree, and we won't get home until about 8:30 p.m. on Sunday night, so I may not post much on Sunday.  Besides the Best of the Genea-Blogs post, of course!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/06/scgs-genealogy-jamboree-day-three.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

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