Welcome to 2026 and it’s time for our first Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge in the New Year from Randy Seaver:

1)  What are your genealogy goals for 2026?  Consider genealogy research, education, organizing, service, writing, and whatever else you care to share.

I shared my personal goals for the year a few days ago.

However, I’ve taught my genealogy group monthly since 2010 and the members often leave it up to me to decide our class topics.

Since most in the group are strong intermediate researchers, but don’t really take advantage of many of the tech tools that are available to keep us organized and make our tasks simpler, my goal is to plan out at least the first four classes of the year with a focus on those tech tools.

We’ll spend class time looking at each site or app (everyone brings a laptop) and trying them out. I will probably give them a homework assignment so they follow through with at least a middle kind of deep dive.

I’ve already created the lesson plan for our January meeting. While attending a sharing session with a new genealogy society I’ve just joined, we heard a presentation on a site that was new to me, even though it’s been around since 2014, called start.me. It’s a bookmarking site with a free version that is easy to use and displays links in a more attractive manner than down the left side of my monitor.

What better way to being a new year than by taking a look at how organized we are – or not!

If everyone likes the tech-themed classes, we’ll continue through June. then, during the summer and into the fall, I’ll teach some methodology classes.

That’s it for my “extra” goal.

Thank you, Randy, for leading the way into another year of SNGF.