Come see me. This is my week on the WikiTree Challenge - Mon, 12 Jul 2021

This Wednesday, July 14 at 3 p.m EDT, I’ll be introduced as the @WikiTreers guest for the week.

I’ll be on the panel of the Livecast which will be about an hour long. The first half hour will be the “reveal” of John Boeren, whose week they’ll have just finished up. The next half hour will introduce me and the challenge that the WikiTreers will have with my tree.

The July 14 livecast link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoHzM2AMRwg

The livecast of my “reveal” next week will take place Wed Jul 21 at 8 p.m. EDT on both WikiTree’s You Tube Channel and WikiTree’s Facebook Page.

Note the intro is at 3 p.m. EDT and the reveal week is at 8 p.m. EDT. The first week was moved earlier to accommodate John Boeren who lives in The Netherlands.

Come to the livecasts so you can add comments and chat. If you can’t make the livecasts, both sessions are recorded and will be available afterwards via WikiTree on their YouTube or Facebook pages.

What’s Going to Happen

I have seeded WikiTree with my family research back to about great-grandparents, which to be honest, is almost all I know.

Genealogists who use WikiTree (known as WikiTreers) have been participating in this challenge since the beginning of the year. Every week they have a new guest and spend the whole week working on the guest’s genealogy. They try to break brick walls and find new ancestors, and add their nuclear families (i.e. siblings and children). Along the way, they check all the information and add sources to back up every fact. This is part of WikiTree’s “Year of Accuracy” and that is what they are striving for.

They also improve each relatives’ biography and try to find interesting details of their lives that will add some life to that person. Biographies are possibly the most valuable contribution you can give your ancestors.

The work they have done for their other guests so far have been fantastic. For example, watch Devon Noel Lee’s reaction and Connie Knox’ reaction to what was found for them when they were the guest.

My genealogy has always been an interesting but difficult challenge. All the 10 “grandparents” I research (my 4, my wife’s 4, my father’s stepfather and 1st wife) immigrated to Manitoba or Saskatchewan from Russia or Romania in the early 1900’s. Russian and Romanian records are not easy to find and not easy to translate once found. It will be a real challenge.

But my experience with the WikiTreers for the past 6 months during the challenge is that they have all shown to be excellent researchers who have been gaining expertise as the weeks go by. They share what they’re working on with each other on the chat that the challenge uses at discord.com. And more often than not, they figure out a solution to most problems. And they all had fun doing it as well. I tried it for a week when Jarrett Ross was the guest and it was thrilling.

Whether or not they break 100 brick walls, or no brick walls, I know they will be improving all my profiles at WikiTree, adding sources and research notes, and providing many new paths for me to explore with my research. I know I will be very surprised at the reveal, likely multiple times.

Radio Silence

I had hoped I’d be able to help as a participant in my own challenge, and do research with all the others. But that’s not the way it works.

So I am respecting the rules and as of my intro on Wednesday, I will stay completely off WikiTree and not peek one iota. I will not go on the Discord chat channels, and I’ll even uninstall Discord from my phone to prevent notifications from it.

I’ve got a couple of projects to keep me busy during the week. But I can tell you right now: it’s going to be a looooooong week!

So please join me if you can, at my kickoff and at my reveal the week after.