It’s time for Elizabeth O’Neal’s January 2018 Genealogy Blog Party!

Beginning a new year always brings resolutions to start, end, change, fix or improve everything. This month, Elizabeth’s blog party is celebrating how we are shaping up – our research, that is – with our fitness training goals. As Elizabeth suggests, I am ready to kick butt!

I am in genealogy heaven with all that is on offer over the next couple of months. I already regularly attend webinars (Check the GeneaWebinars calendar)  and hangouts with DearMyrtle.

However, also on the calendar are: Tucson Family History Day on 3 February, Thomas MacEntee’s Hack Genealogy Boot Camp on 10 February Using Y-DNA, Mitochodrial DNA, and X-DNA for Genealogy Research, Green Valley Genealogical Society’s seminar on 17 February featuring Gena Philibert-Ortega, followed by RootsTech 2018. 🙂

And, that is just February, as Pima County Genealogy Society is hosting their seminar on 9-10 March with CeCe Moore and the frosting on the cake will be hearing Thomas W. Jones at the Family History Society of Arizona seminar on 23-24 March.

That ought to satisfy my sweet tooth for genealogy at least until the Southern California Genealogy Society’s Jamboree 2018 in June! That is also on my calendar this year.

There are two new books on my reading list: Albion’s Seed, by David Hackett Fischer and Val D. Greenwood’s The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy, 4th Edition. I’ve actually read the Greenwood book recently, but DearMyrtle is hosting a study group, which I plan to follow. There is a similar study group for Albion’s Seed, too.

On the software front, I have just started learning to use Tony Proctor’s SVG Family Trees app.

SVG generates family trees that are individually created for use on websites or in blogs. Learning to create the trees, which are really neat because the reader can scroll over a person in the tree and have notes appear, among other features, wasn’t terribly difficult. I run away from anything that has the slightest resemblance to coding, but members of the Facebook group have been wonderful helping me with that part. Trying anything that includes any kind of coding is a big step out of my comfort zone, but I have survived so far.

Learning more about DNA is also on the horizon. Dave and I both took mtDNA tests as a Christmas present. Besides Thomas’s Hack Boot Camp that I’ve mentioned (above), I am going to attend the DNA Day at Jamboree this year. I passed on that in 2016, the last time I went.

On the blogging front, I am very proud of myself that I have posted one new article each day since September 2014. Empty Branches is my (now 4 years and 4 days old) baby and I’m happy that my daily readership is growing and readers are leaving comments, questions and saying hi to me as a new distant cousin. I plan to post at least one new item every day this year, too.

I think my genealogy research is in excellent shape for 2018.