The final day, Saturday 23 January 2010, of the 2nd Annual Arizona Family History Expo found me awake early again! As I said before, Miss Holly who runs the show must not know me very well since she scheduled me for an 8:00 am class!
I was able to run into Amy Coffin of We Tree and Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist in the lobby of the Phoenix Mesa Marriott around 7:15 am. We sat and had coffee and a pastry before heading over to the convention center. I located my room which sat about 100 people and by time the top of the hour rolled around, there were about 85 people! The topic: Become A Genealogy Blog User and I have to say the response was great.
My presentation discussed not only the various categories of genealogy blogs (as depicted in the Genealogy Blog Primer over at GeneaBloggers), but also why genealogists should be following genealogy blogs. In addition, I gave a quick lesson on how to use Google Reader to efficiently follow blogs as well as making sure to leave feedback using the Comments feature.
I want to thank Amy and Lisa for being in the class (and for not being unruly!) as well as all those participants who had wonderful questions. While I don't think we'll see many of the attendees creating their own genealogy blogs, I do think many of them will look to Google Blog Search when looking up surnames and other research points.
* * *
During the presentation I referenced these great genealogy blogs (see below). When I present this class again in the future, I will probably change the mix of links so that many different bloggers get a shout out and can be discovered by the class participants.
Genealogy Vendors
© 2010, copyright Thomas MacEntee
I was able to run into Amy Coffin of We Tree and Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist in the lobby of the Phoenix Mesa Marriott around 7:15 am. We sat and had coffee and a pastry before heading over to the convention center. I located my room which sat about 100 people and by time the top of the hour rolled around, there were about 85 people! The topic: Become A Genealogy Blog User and I have to say the response was great.
My presentation discussed not only the various categories of genealogy blogs (as depicted in the Genealogy Blog Primer over at GeneaBloggers), but also why genealogists should be following genealogy blogs. In addition, I gave a quick lesson on how to use Google Reader to efficiently follow blogs as well as making sure to leave feedback using the Comments feature.
I want to thank Amy and Lisa for being in the class (and for not being unruly!) as well as all those participants who had wonderful questions. While I don't think we'll see many of the attendees creating their own genealogy blogs, I do think many of them will look to Google Blog Search when looking up surnames and other research points.
* * *
During the presentation I referenced these great genealogy blogs (see below). When I present this class again in the future, I will probably change the mix of links so that many different bloggers get a shout out and can be discovered by the class participants.
Getting Started
Archives and Libraries
Cemeteries
Crafts
Diaries
Education and Certification
Ethnicity
Family Reunions
Genealogical and Historical Societies
Genealogy Conferences
Genealogy Industry Blogs
Genealogy Vendors
Geography
Humor
Individual Family History Blogs
Photos and Charts
Research
Surnames
Technology
Writing Your Family History
© 2010, copyright Thomas MacEntee
8 comments:
Thomas, it was a pleasure to be in the audience. Of course I wanted to support you, but I also attended because I wanted to gauge the audience's reaction to the topic.
They took notes and you held their attention throughout the presentation. I agree with you that they're not going to go out and all start blogs, but they understand what they are and their value now. And that's a giant technological leap.
Are you scheduled to present this topic other places?
Thank you, Thomas. It's great to have someone doing outreach for those of us in the blogosphere - especially those of us who live far off the beaten track and will rarely get to attend these events.
Evelyn in Montreal
Thomas, There just isn't enough time in the day at these conferences. It was so good to see you even though it was so brief. Honored to be included in your presentation. Hope to be able to catch your presentations in the future too. You are the master. Next time I hope you can carve out some time to talk more. Glad I get to see you online.
The SCGS and Mesa beads hang in a place of honor in my office. I'm going for a big collection. Let me know if you ever need a corporate sponsor for those. :-)
Thomas thanks for all you do for the Genea-community at large and for including me on this wonderful list of diverse blog resources.
I found myself clicking away & taking notes.
Looking forward to seeing you here in Atlanta!:-)
Cheers,
Luckie.
Thanks for including my directories blog with your group of research blogs. Wish I could have attended!
So you either talk real fast in this 50 minute talk or you don't say much and show the pretty blogs?
Did you show every one of them? If so, wow. I did my Genealogy blog talk on Saturday at Escondido and after showing how to create a blog and how to read blogs there was scant time to visit the 30 blogs I listed on the one-page handout.
Thanks for including three of mine in your list. I'll check my "where did they come from" list and see if my traffic got a bump from your list.
Cheers -- Randy
Thanks everyone for the great comments.
Randy: I don't have time to show each and every blog- I usually pick one from each category. However, I have all the blogs and their respective hyperlinks listed in the syllabus both printed and on the CD.
Thomas:
Thanks for the shout out for my blogs! How I wish I had been there.
-fM
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