Genealogy is Virtually Everywhere - Wed, 13 Nov 2019

Last night, I attended a talk of a prominent genealogy speaker. This is a speaker who keynotes conferences and attracts thousands to her talks.

Diahan Southard gave her talk “Your Slice of the DNA Pie”, and I watched it on my computer at home. It was a presentation of the Virtual Genealogical Association, an organization formed in April 2018 to provide a forum for genealogists to connect online. Webinars such as Diahan’s are just one of their offerings. Membership is just $20 a year.

The VGA just completed their first highly successful Virtual Conference. There was one track with 6 well-known genealogical speakers on the Friday, 6 more on Saturday and 5 on Sunday, so the Conference lasted three full days. In addition, three prerecorded talks were included. All talks are available to attendees for re-watching (or watching if they missed the live talk) for the next six months.

Like any physical conference, handouts by the speakers were made available to attendees for each of their talks individually, or as a syllabus. Attendees were told about a surprise bonus at the end of the conference which was a special offer from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies of a free 7 or 10 week online course worth $89 authored by two of the VGA Conference speakers: Gena Philibert-Ortega and Lisa Alzo.

The VGA Conference was hosted and directed by their delightful president Katherine Willson. She said they were very happy that over 250 people paid the $59 (members) or $79 (non-members) fee to attend the 3-day online conference, something that was really the first of its kind. 

The VGA plans to continue these annual conferences. The next is already scheduled for Nov 13-15, 2000, so be sure to block those days off now in your calendar.

  
What is Virtual Genealogy?

Most of us are used to attending live genealogy conferences. You know, the ones you have to physically be there, be semi-awake, have showered, look decent, be pleasant even if you’re not feeling pleasant.

They may be offered by your local genealogical society in the city you live, a regional conference in a city you can drive to, or a national or international conference that you usually have to fly to. Live conferences require many people to organize and run. They are expensive to put on, require booking of a venue, obtaining of sponsors to cover the costs, vendors to fill an exhibition hall, rooms and logistics to enable the speakers to speak, etc., etc.

By comparison, I would say:

Virtual Genealogy simply is any genealogical activity you can do on your computer or smartphone in your pajamas.

This includes everything from:

• attending online lectures
• taking online courses or workshops
• watching conference livestreams
• communicating with other genealogists via social media
• researching your family online
• using genealogy software to record your family tree information

It’s only in the past couple of years that many of these virtual genealogical activities have become available. I can truly say now that you can be a bedroom genealogist and learn and do almost everything you need to without slipping out of bed (as long as your laptop or smartphone is within arms reach).

This wasn’t possible just a few years ago, but it is possible now.

  
Legacy Family Tree Webinars

The big kid on the block as far as online genealogy lectures goes is Legacy Family Tree Webinars. They have been around since 2010 and started off simply as a way for the the genealogy software program Legacy Family Tree to make instructional videos available for their software. They offer a webinar membership for a $50 annual fee giving you full access to their webinar library. Many new webinars on any and every topic are made available free for the live presentation.

In August 2017, Legacy software and the Family Tree Webinars were purchased by MyHeritage. MyHeritage has allowed them to continue running, with the added advantage of making MyHeritage instructional videos and talks available to everyone for free.

The long-time host of most of the videos is Geoff Rasmussen. He just celebrated Family Tree Webinar’s 1000th webinar in September with this wonderful amusing behind-the-scenes video.

  
Family History Fanatics

Another not-to-be-missed webinar producer is the family of Andy Lee, Devon Lee and their son Caleb Lee, who call themselves Family History Fanatics. They have their own You Tube channel with 16.7 K subscribers where they post their numerous instructional videos and live streams.

They also produce online webinars and workshops which are well worth the modest $30 ($25 early bird) price they charge for them. Their next is a DNA Workshop: Integrated Tools that will be three instructional talks of 2 hours each on Dec 5, 12 and 19.

They also from time to time host one-day eConferences. I paid the $20 early bird fee to attend their A Summer of DNA eConference last August, which included 4 talks by Daniel Horowitz, Donna Rutherford, Emily Aulicino and Leah Larkin.

Their next eConference will be January 25 called “A Winter of DNAVirtual Conference”.  It will feature four DNA experts. I know three of them will be Jonny Perl (DNA Painter), Paul Woodbury (LegacyTree Genealogists) and myself.

I have given many lectures at genealogy conferences around the world, but this will be my first ever live webinar. It will be about double match triangulation and the ideas behind it and what it can be used for. I’m really looking forward to this.

Andy doesn’t have the details up yet for the January conference but likely will soon and will then accept registrations. I’ll write a dedicated blog post when registration becomes available.

  
APG

The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) has webinars for anyone interested.

The APG also has a Virtual Chapter (membership $20 annually) with monthly online presentations by a prominent speaker.

  
Live Streaming of Genealogical Conferences

Another wonderful trend happening more and more is the live streaming now being offered by genealogy conferences. Many of the livestreams have been recorded and made available following the conference, so you don’t always have to wake up at 3 a.m. to catch the talk you want.

MyHeritage Live in Amsterdam took place in September. They have made many of the 2019 lectures available. Lectures from their MyHeritage Live 2018 from Oslo are also still available for free.

The first ever RootsTech in London took place last month. A few of their live stream videos have been made available. You can find quite a few Salt Lake City RootsTech sessions from 2019 and from 2018 still available for free.

The National Genealogical Society offered 10 live stream sessions for their conference last May for $149.

With regards to big Conferences, nothing compares to being there in person. But when you can’t make it, you can still feel the thrill of the conference while it happens with live streams and enjoy later the recordings of some of their sessions.

What’s Next?

My next webinar I plan to watch is another Virtual Genealogy Association webinar: "Artificial Intelligence & the Coming Revolution of Family History" presented by Ben Baker this Saturday morning, Nov 16.

Never stop learning.

What’s next on your agenda?