More Genealogy Education Goals and My Progress, Part II

Earlier this year, I created a list of long term genealogy education goals, and a list of skill areas to develop.

In my last post, I detailed my progress toward the first two goals listed below:

1. I will read scholarly journals.  √
2. I will attend a genealogical institute.  √
3. I will attend one or more conferences.
4. I will participate in webinars. 
5. I will continue to build my library, read books and participate in book studies. 
6. I will work with unfamiliar record types.
7. I will keep a record my educational activities and evaluate them quarterly.

This post will discuss the progress toward Goals 3 and 4: "I will attend one or more conferences," and "I will participate in webinars." Both of these goals can incur significant cost. It takes some research and planning to fulfill these goals without breaking the bank. 

Goal 3 - "I will attend one or more conferences." √

While attending a conference can be expensive due to travel and the cost of the conference itself, the value of the learning and networking can justify the expense. Because I had already attended a national institute, I decided I should concentrate on finding a local or state conference this fall. I was very fortunate that the two-day Minnesota Genealogy Society1 (MGS) North Star Conference was held less than 10 miles from my house. The conference was small but the crowd was enthusiastic.

Day One, Friday afternoon, was held at the society's South St. Paul location. I attended a class by Paula Stuart Warren 2 which was great fun. She used real-life examples and had attendees collaborate in groups. It was really interesting to see how different groups had different ideas about the clues presented and where to look next.

Day Two, Saturday, was held at Inver Hills Community College, less than 3 miles from my home. You can't get any closer than that! I attended several sessions including the keynote and final session by David Rencher 3, Chief Genealogical Officer for FamilySearch. 

David Rencher's presentations were not only enlightening but very entertaining. And he presented an opportunity for all to contribute to Preserve the Pensions and have the donations matched by MGS, then matched again by the Federation of Genealogical Societies, and then matched again by Ancestry.com. Every $1 donated became $8 for the Preserve the Pension fund.

The conference was very reasonably priced, as a member I paid $80 for Friday afternoon and all-day Saturday sessions. The speakers were very knowledgable - I consider it a day very well spent.

I also participated in some virtual conferences this year. The Association of Professional Genealogists 4 held a virtual conference January 8 and January 9. There were a variety of pricing options; I purchased the entire conference of 9 sessions and the digital syllabus for $145. You must be a member to participate. I was unable to watch any of the sessions live but watched all of them after the archived sessions became available online in early February. The archived online access ended after 30 days.

Another virtual conference I participated in was the National Genealogical Society 5 Conference held in May. The sessions were all extremely educational and entertaining, presented by nationally-known experts.

I did not view any of the sessions live due to my schedule but was able to view them almost immediately afterward until mid-August when access was removed.

In my opinion it was another very well-spent genealogy dollar.


This fall I also tried Family Tree University's 6 Fall Conference. This conference is just a little bit different than the other virtual conferences in that it added some other social media functions, like chats and discussion boards. It also added the ability to download the actual presentation for viewing later. There were 15 sessions in four different tracks. This was a little more expensive than some of the others but I tried it because the names of the speakers were very well known to me. The sessions were shorter than most conference sessions, about 30 minutes. But they were very well done and I would definitely try this again.

Goal 4 - "I will participate in webinars." √

I'm going to brag just a little here - I rock at attending and/or viewing webinars. My day job interferes with attending webinars and hangouts live during the day. I try to attend certain live webinars at night or on weekends. I've created a list of webinar sites that I can use to find either free or low cost webinars at times when I am doing laundry or other tasks that don't require my full attention. 

I won't list the actual webinars here because the list is actually quite long: Thus far, in 2015, I have attended or viewed almost 100 webinars amounting to over 100 hours of education. As mentioned in my last blog post, I track the webinars with the Title, Sponsor, Presenter, Topic and Sub-topic, Length, Links to Presenter notes (downloaded and located on my computer) and My Notes.

What I will list are the locations of the sites where I have found webinars, either live or recorded, that are relevant to my goals. Perhaps they will also help you.

FamilyTreeWebinars.com 7, sponsored by Legacy Software© 8, is one of my favorite resources. Even though it is sponsored by a family tree database software company, many of the webinars here are applicable to general research as opposed to using Legacy software. There is a fee. When I joined, the fee was just under $50 annually. You can also join for just one month to see if the resource is of value to you; the cost at the time of this writing was just under ten dollars. So far this year, I have viewed over 25 webinars for over 25 hours. This is less than $2 an hour, and frankly, I think it is a wonderful value. Many webinars are free, and most are free for the first week or so after posting. So try before you buy and see if it works for you. Many of the names of presenters were very familiar to me and are nationally recognized genealogy speakers and educators. You do not need to be a member to view the list of available webinars.

I have viewed ten webinars at the Illinois State Genealogical Society 9 (ILGenSoc) website, over ten hours of webinar learning. Again, many of the presenters are nationally recognized genealogy speakers and educators. Viewing these webinars requires that you join the Illinois  State Genealogical Society. The cost is very reasonable, only $35 a year for an individual at the time of this writing. If you have ancestors who spent any time in Illinois, it's a great value. But even if you didn't the webinars are likely to be of interest. 

The one downfall I have noticed in the IlGenSoc website as an iPad user: the webpage listing of webinars has the actual webinars embedded in it. This is fine when there are just a few. But when there are dozens, it takes a while to load and is difficult to watch webinars further down the list.

Another favorite of mine is the Southern California Genealogical Society 10 (SCGS). They have a great catalog of archived libraries and add to it monthly, usually the first Saturday and third Wednesday. The live webinar broadcast is open to the public but once they are placed in the archives the webinars are available only to members. 

The cost of membership to the Southern California Genealogical Society is very reasonable: a one-year individual membership is $35 annually. I almost always recognize the speaker's name as someone who is well regarded in the genealogy field. I have viewed over twenty SCGS webinars live or archived. 

RootsTech Video Archive 11 allows the viewer to watch webinars from the 2015 RootsTech conference. I've always wanted to attend this very popular conference in Salt Lake City. But the associated costs of travel and hotel make it difficult to so.  This year's conference had almost 24,000 attendees. If that kind of crowd makes you claustrophobic, you might want to consider watching the webinars live during the conference, or you can watch the archived webinars later. Only a small percentage of the sessions are presented via the web,  but for those of us who don't attend, it's a great resource. Those who do attend the conference can skip the live webinar presentations and go to other sessions they are interested in, knowing they can see the webinars later.

While the majority of the webinars I attended or viewed online were from those listed above, there were a few other resources that I used as well.

Youtube.com12 has lots of genealogy videos, many of them are part of a series and/or "channel" and are added to frequently.

Dear Myrtle13 has many different series on YouTube, including Mastering Genealogical Proof book studies, Demystifying DNA and others. What I absolutely love about Dear Myrtle is that she provides wonderful introduction and intermediate material to viewers in a very understandable and non-threatening way. She has great guests and panelists that add richness to discussions. And she encourages you to learn more and dig deeper into those tough subjects like genealogical proof standards. Dear Myrtle also offers an ongoing list of live webinars available each week at Geneawebinars.com14.

Another Youtube channel is Ancestry.com Desktop Education Series. Most videos, if not all, are presented by Christa Cowen, the Barefoot Genealogist15.  These videos can also be seen at Ancestry.com16 in the video area.

I'm pretty happy with my progress so far. The conferences and webinars I've attended and/or viewed have all had topics that fit closely with my areas to grow. And in addition to the above conference opportunities, I plan to attend at least one additional conference this year, the NARA Virtual Genealogy Fair17 held October 21 and 22.

In addition to the above webinar opportunites, I plan to view webinars both live and archived at the Minnesota Genealogical Society18 website. You must be a member to view but membership is very reasonable. There are only 10-12 archive webinars thus far. I hope their plan is to continue to broadcast live webinars then archive them for members to view later.

I have also viewed some webinars sponsored by the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG)19  which are available on their website here.

There are so many great quality opportunities for continuing education, and most are a very reasonable cost or free. Sometimes it just hard to choose which to watch next!



Sources

1. Minnesota Genealogical Society, homepage, (http://www.mngs.org/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)

2. Genealogy By Paula, homepage, (http://genealogybypaula.com/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)

3. FamilySearch, The Office of the CGO (Chief Genealogy Office), (https://familysearch.org/blog/en/office-cgo-cheif-genealogy-officer/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)
4. Association of Professional Genealogists, homepage (http://www.apgen.org/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)
5. National Genealogical Society, homepage (http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)
6. Family Tree University, homepage (http://www.familytreeuniversitey.com/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)
7. Family Tree Webinars, homepage (http://www.famlytreewebinars.com/ : accessed 11 Sept 2015)
8. Legacy Family Tree (http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)
9. Illinois Genealogical Society, homepage, (http://www.ilgensoc.org/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)
10. Southern California Genealogical Society, homepage, (http://www.scgsgenealogy.com/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)
11. RootsTech 2015 Video Archive, homepage, (http://rootstech.org/video :accessed 11 Sept 2015) 
12. Youtube.com, homepage, (http://www.youtube.com/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)
13. Dear Myrtle, blog, (http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015) 
14. Geneawebinars, blog, (http://www.geneawebinars.com/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)
15. Crista Cowan, blog, (http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/author/ccowan/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015) 
16. Ancestry.com, homepage, (http://www.ancestry.com/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)
17. National Archives Virtual Genealogy Fair, homepage, (https://www.archives.gov/calendar/genealogy-fair/ : accessed 11 Sept 2015)
18. Board for the Certification of Genealogists, homepage, (http://www.bcgcertifcation.org/ :accessed 11 Sept 2015)