Join Me for #genchatDNA Tomorrow - Fri, 16 Mar 2018

Both #genchat and #genchatDNA are Twitter chat sessions which meet periodically and gather together genealogists to provide their set of insights about the current topic.

Tomorrow, I am the #genchatDNA featured “Answerer”. If you are a genealogist who is also on Twitter, join me tomorrow, Saturday March 17 for a very fast hour starting at 8 pm GMT. (Check your local time in North America, below.)

The #genchat sessions are once every two weeks on Friday evening. The #genchatDNA sessions are every month on a Saturday afternoon.

The #genchatDNA discussions only began in November last year. Previous chats were:

• Sat Feb 10, 2018 – DNA, Q&A and “The Chromosome Browser” with special guest Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage.
• Sat Jan 13, 2018 – What to Expect When Both Parents Test
• Dec, 2017 – (no session this month)
• Sat, Nov 18, 2017 – Where Do I Start?

I try to join in here (and at #genchat) whenever there is a topic of interest to me and I’m available. I pretty well have to be at home and on my computer to make it manageable. Different people do it different ways, often handling the multitude of tweets during the hour with a Twitter client such as TweetChat or Hootsuite. I tried Nurph a couple of years ago, but decided on a simpler way even before Nurph was discontinued.

What I do is keep 4 browser windows open to the Twitter site:

1. My primary window will be open to a search of #genchat or #genchatDNA with “Latest” selected. That shows all posts with the tag in it from newest to oldest. Every minute or so, it updates with a message that says “nn new tweets” and when I’m ready I can click on that and read the latest. The other nice thing about this window is when I click on the Tweet button, the “Compose New Tweet” form already has the search term #genchatDNA in the box for me so I won’t forget to add it.
2. My 2nd window contains my Twitter notifications, so I can see any reactions to any of my tweets and respond if I get a question or comment.
3. I keep one window open with my own tweets and replies, just so I can refer back to what I had said earlier.
4. My 4th window has my own Twitter feed. That way, if anyone I follow forgets to add the genchat hash tag, I’ll still see it.

There is a webpage home for #genchat at:  www.genealogygenchat.com. There, you will find a schedule of future #genchat session. Amy Johnson Crow will be the guest on March 30th in “Learning the Write Stuff”.

Some of the #genchat-ers got together at RootsTech last month holding their #GenChat cutout that they were using to promote the chat sessions:

Ask anyone about #genchat
they will tell you 3 things:
(1) it’s FUN;
(2) it’s FRIENDLY; and,
(3) it’s the FASTEST 60 minutes of #genealogy in your life

Our #genchat courtesy message models:@GenealogyJen @thesingleleaf @caitieamanda @CarolinaGirlGen @SeekingSurnames @BGWylie pic.twitter.com/1fkmXqjwnM

— SirLeprechaunRabbit®The Bunny Bartender (@leprchaunrabbit) March 15, 2018

I believe there is also a #genchatDE, but that one is all in German, so I for one would have trouble following and participating.

Another genealogy chat session seen on Twitter is #AncestryHour which appears to be very popular and is on every Tuesday at 7 pm GMT. It is more a free-for-all, with no specific topic and no moderator asking pre-set questions.

And I believe there is an #iamnextgen chat. I am very familiar with the NextGen Genealogy Network made up of some of our brightest young new genealogists between the ages of 18 and 50, but I haven’t participated there because I think I’d be classified as #iamprevgen.