2016 and Looking Forward - Sat, 2 Jan 2016

It’s a new year. I was very happy to complete the tabulation of the GenSoftReviews Users Choice Awards for 2015 and send out the Press Release about it, which so far only James Tanner has posted about it (also here). Usually that takes me a full day to take the results, make up the new badges, and manually rebuild the awards page and send out congratulatory emails to each of the winners. And yesterday, January 1, was no different. My family was home but they knew my annual ritual and I was upstairs in my office working on this and coming down only at meal times.

Now I can get back to what’s necessary. At the current time I am finishing off the 8 talks that I’ll be presenting on the upcoming 10th Unlock the Past Genealogy Cruise which I and my wife are really looking forward to. This will be different from my first cruise with them a few years ago. There are fewer attendees and more days at sea with more talks. It will be more intimate and we all will likely become close friends with everybody by the end. It will be tough to leave once its over. The cruise is from February 14 to March 3. I will be attempting to tweet and even blog about some of the interesting speakers and talks on the cruise while I’m away – but that may be spotty depending on the Internet on the ship and how much I can post from my phone.

While down under, I’ll also be filling in for Judy Russell as she takes a day off in Melbourne, Australia on Friday February 26. I’ll be giving my talk on How to improve research with source-based genealogy. If you can make it to Melbourne that day and would like to join me there for lunch, I’d love to have you come. If you want to hear the talks, you can book a spot for yourself or pay at the door.

We are leaving Winnipeg on February 10, so that precludes me from going to RootsTech this year.  I had gone 2 years ago and 4 years ago so I was starting a pattern, but I’ll have to break it this year and try again next year.

Along with finishing the presentations, I am also attempting to get one more version of Behold out prior to the trip. These are two relatively simple but pretty exciting enhancements that I’m working on. They are each worthy of their own blog post so let’s wait for the release, which I’ll likely call version 1.3, when I’ll describe them.

Tamura Jones today asked me if interest in FHISO is gone. FHISO is the standards organization that was formed to produce a standard to replace the GEDCOM genealogical data communications standard for transferring genealogy data between programs. Tamura wrote in his Genealogy 2015 article:

"There was practically no movement on genealogy standards. Throughout most the year, the Family History Information Standards Organisation (FHISO) seemed asleep again, and when they finally published some board meeting notes in November, the focus of these notes wasn’t on new technical standards, but overwhelmingly on modifying the organisation; possible moving to another state, creating a new vision for FHISO, changing the organisation structure and amending the by-laws."

I responded to Tamura and said that I think interest is still there in what FHISO wants to do, i.e. update/create a new standard. But I think people have given up hope that they’ll ever get it done.

And here it is 2016, and as it turns out people are thinking the same about Behold – that I’ll never get it done. In fact, Behold fell out of the GenSoftReview User’s Choice group last year because of 4 comments that had no particular gripes with Behold, except that they expected it would never get done.

Well, I will be continuing to work hard at it. I don’t make it common knowledge, but I do have a full time day job, and a wife and two girls at home, and family that we spend time with and an elderly uncle I help with and a regional heritage centre that I’m a past president of and still do a lot of volunteer work for, and a city hockey team that I and the rest of my city gets excited about, and I take out the garbage, do the dishes, shop for groceries and partake with the family in city events and go to funerals. The 20 or so hours I spend in front of my computer each week, mostly late evenings and weekends are not all Behold development. There’s everything else that needs to be done on the computer ranging from website maintenance and writing blogs to doing my finances and researching plane tickets and hotels. So 10 hours a week on Behold is about all I average (not counting the hours in the shower, on the bus, and just sitting around thinking about it).

I’m excited about where I’m going with Behold. I’m trying to keep up with technology and incorporate what’s new. There’s Windows 10, the cloud, phones, programming language advancements, database advancements, online genealogy databases to connect to, the DNA phenomena, new genealogy services, old genealogy services shutting down, and constant changes in the genealogy software scene which I keep up with due to my monitoring of all the software out there for GenSoftReviews.

So please be patient. I will get there. I am getting there. Behold and using Behold to record my genealogy and allowing others to do the same is my lifetime goal.

Here’s a little secret, just for you: On November 24 of this year, I will be turning 60. Also, on that day I will be retiring from my day job. I do enjoy my job, but I want to spend more time working on Behold and my genealogy while the time is ripe.

2016 will be an especially exciting year for me. I wish the same be true for all of you. All the best in 2016!