Jamboree Day 2: The Blogger Summit

Day 2 of the Jamboree began early for me. My daughter woke us up at 5:00 a.m., crying, with a poopy diaper. I’ll bet none of the other geneabloggers can say that.

Probably the session I was most looking forward to was the Blogger Summit, featuring Steve Danko, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Dick Eastman, Leland Meitzler, George G. Morgan, Randy Seaver, and Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak.

To be honest, I really wasn’t sure what to expect at this session. After all, what exactly IS a “Blogger Summit?” I think the concept was unusual, but also very forward-thinking of the SCGS for realizing what a valuable tool blogging is for genealogy, and for recruiting some of the most well-known geneabloggers to serve on the panel.

The discussion was lively and interesting and covered a variety of topics. The panel was moderated by Leland Meitzler who kept things moving for almost 2 hours. Dick Eastman “manned” a laptop computer and projector which displayed the panelists’ blogs as they talked. I had the pleasure of sitting in the audience next to fellow bloggers Craig Manson and Kathryn Doyle, who I had met in person the evening before.

An interesting side note: I was happy to learn that Randy Seaver does indeed have a wife – a lovely lady named Linda, who was kind enough to take a zillion photos after the session. The fact that she was sporting a t-shirt that read “Geneaholic’s Widow” is rather telling, though… but you can draw your own conclusions there. :-)

My Mobile “Incident”

You may already have read that I live-blogged, or “moblogged” (mobile-blogged), the event while it was happening. You can see my actual post here.

And here’s the backstory: As I was listening to the panel of blogging experts, I felt that it was such a great moment that I wanted to share it - right then and there - so I snapped a photo with my cell phone and sent it to my blog. My intent was not to offer a lot of content, but just to say, "Hey, look what's happening here! Isn't this exciting?" I thought so, anyway.

Dick Eastman was commenting on how blogs kept the news so current and showed a post from Craig Manson’s blog written the night before. I chuckled to myself because I knew that my post was even more recent, but I didn’t say anything.

Eventually, I pulled up my blog on my cell phone’s browser and leaned over to show Kathryn Doyle – I thought she would get a giggle out of what I’d done. Instead, she brought up my blog on her cell phone’s browser, and as I was drooling over her beautiful iPhone, I barely noticed that she got up from her seat and walked over to show it to Dick Eastman. The next thing I knew, my blog was live and large on the screen.

It really was a surreal moment as the panel of bloggers turned and looked at themselves. I think it was the only time they were at a loss for words!

For the record, this was not my first time moblogging. This post was sent while on the road to Burbank, and this one was sent on Mother’s Day from my family room couch when I was too lazy tired to turn on my computer. Moblogging is not my preferred method of blogging, as the photo quality from my cell phone isn’t as good as my camera(s), and I don’t have control over how my posts look. Plus, it’s really tedious to type on my cell phone’s tiny keyboard when I’m used to typing 70+ wpm on a regular keyboard, so I tend to keep my mobile posts short. But it works “on the fly,” and I can always go back and pretty up my mobile posts later, if I want to. I’ll write more about moblogging in the future.

Craig Manson wrote a nice post about my mobile post, and a few other bloggers, including Randy Seaver and Dick Eastman, mentioned it in their post-Jamboree articles. Many thanks to these bloggers for promoting my little blog... and Randy, I did indeed experience a “blogalanche!”

What you may not know is that in addition to this mobile post, I also “Tweeted” during the conference. By this I mean that I sent short updates to Twitter via my cell phone. These updates were available to anyone who clicked on my Twitter page or with whom I’m a “Twitter Buddy.” Tweets are slightly easier to do since they are only brief text messages, but it’s not always easy to sum up your thoughts in 140 characters (or less). I’ll post more on Twitter soon, too, as I feel that it’s a valuable resource for a variety of reasons. Oh, and thanks to Tim Agazio for joining the ranks of my Twitter friends!

Final Thoughts on the Summit

I was surprised to see that the room wasn’t filled to capacity, as many of the other sessions had been. My guess is that geneablogging is still something of a niche, despite the fact that there are already hundreds and hundreds of us out there, and many more are joining the ranks every day.

From what I’ve seen as a technology facilitator for the DAR, the “fear factor” still grips many people, as does the feeling of “why on earth would I want to write about my life/family/genealogy so that other people can READ IT?” Well, I’ll tell you why: genealogy is a collaborative effort, and if you don’t put yours out there, no one will ever see it and want to collaborate with you. The answer to who great-great-great-grandpa Dunn’s parents were might be out there, but you’ll never know!

Lastly, it was interesting to hear the perspectives of the various bloggers, especially those who had been at it for a long time. Many questions were asked and answered, and although I really didn’t learn anything new, I did come away with a valuable piece of advice, originally given to Schelly Talalay Dardashti by George G. Morgan, shortly after she first began her blog: “Don’t let it take over your life.”

I’ll confess: blogging is addictive.

Be warned.


Some of the bloggers I had the pleasure of meeting at the Summit:
Back L to R: Leland Meitzler, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Randy Seaver, Craig Manson, Me.
Front L to R: Kathryn Doyle, Dick Eastman, George G. Morgan, Steve Danko.

Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth O'Neal

A Wish is Granted for Geni Users

There has been some discussion recently among fellow genea-bloggers about using online genealogy databases. Randy at Genea-Musings and Denise at Family Matters both use WeRelate, which calls itself "the world's largest genealogy wiki."

I haven't tried WeRelate, but have instead been using Geni.

Why Geni? No reason, really, except that I saw it first.

I learned of Geni last June at the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree. A couple of guys from Geni had a table in the Exhibit Room, and their big-screen display happened to catch the eye of my computer engineer husband.

Plus, their nifty brochure featuring Brad Pitt's (presumed) family tree caught my eye, so I told my husband that I'd try it out.

The first thing I noticed was that Geni did not allow you to upload a GEDCOM. This was extremely frustrating, especially for those of us with thousands of names in our databases. The thought of entering information for each ancestor individually was mind-numbing.

Geni users kept asking (wishing?) for a GEDCOM upload. Geni kept saying, "Be patient - it's coming!"

Ok, fine. I don't really consider myself a patient person, but I liked many of Geni's features, so I was willing to hang in there. For a while.

After all, my family enjoyed seeing the gazillion photos of my daughter that I'd already posted. And a few of us were already collaborating and sharing what we knew about various ancestors.

My very favorite feature? The birthday/anniversary/special occasion reminders that nudge me via email. This could only be improved if a hand came out of my computer and tapped me on the shoulder. Repeatedly.

I've found Geni to be kind of like a cross between MySpace, Flickr, and a regular genealogy database (and yes, I use all three).

Well, patience has finally paid off... sort of. Geni announced today on its Blog and via Twitter that GEDCOMs with up to 5,000 names can now be imported.

This is good news for new users, or users who have only posted a small tree.

It's not such good news for users (like myself) who have already painstakingly entered many names and photos:

Please Note: Importing a GEDCOM will create a new Geni Tree. If you already have a Geni account you must use a different email address for this import. This will start a new Tree which will not be merged into your existing Tree. We plan to enable GEDCOM Import into existing Trees in the future.

Visions of GEDCOM-mergers-past gone bad keep dancing through my head...

So... it seems that I may be exercising my patience a bit longer. We'll see. If I get brave and give the merger thing a try, I'll let you know how it goes. And please do the same for me, if you're a Geni user. I'd love to hear your success story!

Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth O'Neal