Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Randy's Genealogy Activity Highlights for 2019

Looking back over the past year, I see that I pursued these genealogy and family history related activities:

1)  Speaking

*  Taught one "Beginning Computer Genealogy" class (4 sessions, 2 hours each session, 50 pages of handouts) at OASIS San Diego in April at Grossmont Center.

*  Gave two one-hour presentations to San Diego Genealogical Society in July, and two presentations to the Chula Vista Genealogical Society in May and October.

*  Gave two presentations on "Genetic Genealogy and DNA Testing for OASIS at OASIS and Santee Library in August and September.

2)  Society Work

*  Moderated 10 SDGS RootsMagic User Group meetings at San Diego FamilySearch Library with 6 to 15 in attendance.

*  Moderated 11 CVGS Research Group monthly meetings at Chula Vista Civic Center Library with 8 to 20 in attendance.

*  Moderated 11 CVGS DNA Interest Group monthly meetings at Chula Vista Civic Center Library with 8 to 20 in attendance.

*  Wrote, edited, printed, mailed and emailed 12 CVGS monthly Newsletters (10 pages each month) to the CVGS membership.

*  Served on the CVGS Board for the 17th consecutive year as Research Group Chair, DNA Group Chair, and Newsletter Editor, attending monthly Board meetings and General Society program meetings.

3)  Education

*  Watched about 50 Family Tree Webinars and about 10 Virtual Genealogical Society webinars as part of my subscriptions to both services.

*  Attended the 2019 Southern California Genealogy Jamboree conference in Burbank in June, attending classes and enjoying the exhibit hall.

*  Attended 2 San Diego Genealogical Society seminars in January and August:

*  Attended 8 SDGS monthly program meetings, each with two presentations by a speaker.

*  Attended several CVGS Saturday Workshops and all 11 monthly General Meetings with one presentation by a speaker.

*  Participated in about 40 Mondays With Myrt webinars contributing information, commentary and opinions about events in the genea-sphere.  Also watched several Wacky Wednesday webinars.

*  Watched hundreds of YouTube videos about genealogy-related topics - I subscribe to about 90 YouTube channels for genealogy.

*  Read the NEHGS magazines and download them to my genealogy education folders.  American Ancestors also provides digital editions of a number of periodicals for New England which I search occasionally and download articles to my genealogy folders.

*  Downloaded syllabus articles from RootsTech, MyHeritage Live and Jamboree and save them to my education folders.

*  Read thousands of genealogy-related blog posts from hundreds of geneabloggers using Feedly on a daily basis.

4)  Blogging

*  Wrote 975 blog posts on Genea-Musings in the 14th year of the blog.  Most of my posts are about my own research (e.g., Amanuensis Monday, Wordless Wednesday, Treasure Chest Thursday, Seavers in the News, 52 Ancestors, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, and Surname Saturday), but some are genea-curation about the industry (e.g., New and Updated Ancestry Collections; New and Updated FamilySearch collections; new and updated MyHeritage collections; Genealogy News Bytes on Tuesdays and Fridays; and Best of the Genea-Blogs on Sundays), occasional guest posts, press releases,  research tips (Tuesday's Tips), questions asked (e.g., Dear Randy posts), genealogy software, online collections, or industry issues.  See:

*  Randy's "Best" Genea-Musings Posts in 2019
*  Top 40 Most Viewed Posts in 2019 on Genea-Musings

*  Wrote 273 blog posts on The Geneaholic blog in the 13th year of the blog.  Almost all of them are daily journal posts about my work and my life.

*  Now have about 10,235,000 page views on the Genea-Musings blog.

5)  DNA Tests and Analysis

*  Have autosomal DNA test results at AncestryDNA (test), MyHeritageDNA (upload), FamilyTreeDNA (test), 23andMe (test), and Living DNA (upload).

*  Review my DNA matches on a regular basis, and make notes about the match data, including known relationships and common ancestors.  I have spreadsheets for the highest matches on AncestryDNA and MyHeritageDNA matches with collected information.  I occasionally download my Shared DNA segments from MyHeritageDNA, FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe.

*  Created AutoCluster groups on Ancestry and MyHeritage using the Genetic Affairs and Shared Clustering programs.  I have not done much on DNA Painter yet because my known common ancestors with my matches are relatively few on the sites with chromosome browsers.

6)  Genealogy Research and Family Trees

*  Use RootsMagic as my "master" family tree program on my desktop and laptop computers.  See   My RootsMagic Genealogy Database Statistics Update - 31 December 2019 for my progress on my family tree.

*  Use the WebHints for Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast, and FamilySearch to add content (names, relationships, events, dates, places, notes and source citations) for records found that apply to each profile.  

*  Search for more records for selected profiles on all of the sites, adding content and source citations for records found that apply to each profile.  

*  Mine selected record collections on Ancestry (using the specific database tool for Ancestry Member Tree profiles), on MyHeritage (finding Record Matches for a specific collection for my MyHeritage tree profiles), on Findmypast (Record Hints on Findmypast tree profiles), and on FamilySearch Record Hints for FamilySearch Family Tree profiles.

*  TreeShare weekly the changes to the RootsMagic tree to my Ancestry Member Tree, which generates more Record Hints for those profiles.  Update my Findmypast and MyHeritage trees using GEDCOM on a yearly basis.

*  Match my RootsMagic profiles with FamilySearch Family Tree profiles on a regular basis using the FamilySearch tools in RootsMagic, and add or edit Family Tree profiles and/or RootsMagic profiles to add content, notes and source citations.

*  Wrote Randy's Best Genealogy Discoveries in 2019 to summarize my genealogy research efforts.

7)  Digital Data Maintenance

*  Added digital images of genealogy records, including downloaded books or articles, to my ancestral surname and family files on a regular "as found" basis.

*  Added other genealogy-related documents (e.g., CVGS Newsletters, presentation slides and handouts, etc.) to my Genealogy file folder.  

*  Backed up the digital image files to Google Drive and iDrive in the cloud, and some files to Dropbox for transfer to the laptop on an as-needed basis.  

*  Submitted 23 home movies (mostly my grandfather's and my father's movies) to Forever for digitizing and loved the result.  See My FOREVER Home Movie Digitization Experience - Wonderful!  Saved them on Forever, iDrive and Google Drive.  Bought another box for more digitization in 2020.

8)  Summary

*  That's what I do almost every day for 5 to 11 hours a day chained to my computer; plus eat and sleep, but usually take a mid-day nap to recharge.  I worked about 3,000 hours on genealogy-related activities in 2019.  Didn't make much money.  I think I'm my own boss.  Made a lot of discoveries and had a lot of genea-fun.  

*   I still find time for family activities, church, Padres baseball, Chargers football and Aztecs football/basketball activities, and reading fiction while watching TV.  I check Facebook daily, and read or watch political news/events online and on TV. 


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5 comments:

Life Goes On said...

I did not know you had another blog. I read you off and on. Not enough I admit. I will have to read your other blog. I do not know how you find the time to do all you do.
thank you for sharing

Unknown said...

Can you tell us what some of the UTube channels for genealogy that you subscribe to?

Taneya said...

I am reminded, once again, just how fabulous you are! This is stellar Randy - you have done so much! Way to go!!!!

Randy Seaver said...

Taneya, I have 8 to 12 hours a day to do whatever I want to do, and I can choose to do what I do. Free will, and all that, tempered by responsibilities. I choose to do genealogy research and writing, and contribute to the discipline. If it was boring or drudgery, I wouldn't do it.

I know that it can all end, or be severely curtailed, in a moment of time - I'm 76 (overweight, diabetic, love ice cream), and Linda is 77 with Alzheimers and a fall risk (on a walker and wheelchair now). So I do what I have to do at home (chauffeur, shopping, laundry, cleaning, cooking, dishwashing, trash, repairing, yardwork, take a nap, etc.), and while she watches TV or goes to bed, I do some or all of the task list every day. My one "normal" activity is reading the newspaper while watching news. baseball on TV (we go to 20 Padres games), or watching football on TV, all of which takes some time away from genealogy.

I wager that many other genealogists, like yourself, with 32 years of experience and research accumulation, could spend 8 to 12 hours a day doing client research, writing books, maintaining a website, etc. and achieve even more.

Taneya said...

You are indeed fortunate to have the freedom to spend so much each day doing what you love and I will continue to read about it all.