Packing My Bags

Hello. My name is Jen, and I'm a blogger. 

In exactly one month from today, I'll be heading slightly southwest to Las Vegas, Nevada for the National Genealogical Society 2013 Family History Conference! I am excited for a whole bunch of reasons, and I simply cannot wait to get there! 

During the conference, I will be blogging away as an Official Blogger... but not here. Nope! I'll be over on The In-Depth Genealogist blog, collaborating with fellow pirate women, Stephanie Pitcher Fishman and Terri O'Connell, who are also attending. Together, we will represent the team at IDG, missing only 1/4 of our leadership; Jennifer Alford (but, she'll be at home helping us out!)

Another piece of the week I am super excited about? The three of us will also be hosting #genchat from the conference! The twitter based collaboration for genealogists will occur on Friday, May 10 LIVE from Vegas! We will be releasing the details as we get closer to departure date, but you can bet that a true social media event will be taking place that evening, and we are certainly hoping that many of our fellow conference attendees will join us in the fun! 

(If you haven't yet experienced #genchat, read all about it on Conference Keeper and come learn with us on April 12, as we discuss the FamilySearch Wiki!)

Over the next four weeks, I'll be posting more and more - on all the accounts I have! - about the conference. I love conferences. I love social media. It's all coming together for me in May! Posts will be here, on IDG and on the Conference Keeper blog: CK Updates! 

I am going to issue an invitation, too, to you. If you blog, if you blog about genealogy, if you are going to or will be blogging about the NGS Conference this year, please join our little group over on Facebook. IDG has created a group just for Genealogy Bloggers at NGS 2013; and we're using it as a platform for geneabloggers to communicate, make plans, share ideas and little tidbits we pick up about Vegas itself. All sorts of preparation for the conference. During the actual event, we'll be using it to share posts and arrange meet ups. Come be a part of the community! We'd love to have you. 

Attending the 2012 NGS Family History Conference Without Actually Attending

This is a big week in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thousands of genealogists, family historians, archivists and others will be traveling to and around Ohio for the 2012 NGS Family History Conference, which takes place May 9-12.

If you are anything like me, travel funds for conferences and other genealogy events are limited, so this year, I am not able to attend. What that actually means is that my physical self will not be present in Cincinnati.

In reality, I will be attending. Via social media.

I learned of the true power of Twitter during this year's RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City. For those that attended with me, whether you were there or not, you know to what I'm referring. The conversations that existed through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, the live streams of sessions and other methods were incredible. I read a comment this morning that was posted, simply saying, "you couldn't tell who was in the room and who was at home in their living room." It was exciting, invigorating, and best of all, incredibly educational and motivating.

I am planning on attending this year's NGS conference the same way.

• A summary of the events is available on the NGS site,  http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/conference_info. This includes available downloads, a mobile app for those attending in Ohio, and a daily schedule. 
• You can follow the conference blog here. ( http://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/)
• The National Genealogical Society, I'm sure, will be posting news and tidbits on their Facebook page.
• You can follow NGS on Twitter, using @ngsgenealogy. 
• The Twitter hashtag, or #, is #ngs2012. (To make it easy on yourself, create a new feed or column to follow just that hashtag.)
• The conference will have official bloggers, which are folks out in the field, who are attending, who will blog about their experience. One example is Laura Cosgrove Lorenzana, owner of From Roots to Leaves, who will be blogging on The Last Leaf of This Branch. You can find the full and complete list on the NGS Conference Blog, on the right hand side. See link above. 
• Here's a great tip: the Accessible Archives has created an RSS bundle, so you can follow all the blogs very easily. Find that here:  http://www.accessible-archives.com/2012/05/follow-the-ngs2012-official-bloggers/. (My thanks to Gena Philibert-Ortega of the blog Food.Family.Epemera. for the information.)
• Use the NGS TwitterFall to track the tweets easily:  http://twitterfall.com/?trend=%23ngs2012%21%231F3547. 

So, conference goers, enjoy! Whether you are there in the crowd, or sitting at home with a good cup of coffee in your pajama's (oh, yes, that is most certainly the plan at my house!), learn much and remember to share! We will join in the conference experience and conversation. May the fun begin!

A Day Off and the First Day

I took the day off today. I didn't touch my computer, log in to Facebook, Twitter, or email until after 2:00pm, and spent some time for myself. It was fun, exhilarating, and rejuvenating to be outside in the sun... but I'm anxious to get back to my research tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the first day of Rootstech 2012, a genealogy conference focusing on advancements in technology and how that works within the genealogy community. Held in Salt Lake City, its a big event, and I'm going to miss it. A little bit bummed about that. I am really hoping I can go next year, it would be a great few months if I could attend Rootstech and then the National Genealogical Society (NGS) conference in the spring in Vegas.

For those that are interested, they are doing a live feed of several of the sessions during the conference. You can see the schedule here: http://rootstech.org/

I'll be catching as many of those as I can. If you can't find me tomorrow, look in front of the computer...