A Christmas Present for You

Steven Kapp Perry sent me a link to his podcast in which he interviews Ron Tanner, product Manager for New FamilySearch. I hope you'll enjoy listening to it as an early Christmas Present.

The last minute shipping deadlines pass today. It has been a great Christmas season for us and we are so thankful for our wonderful clients. We appreciate how open you have been as you have shared your families with us and let us mirror them back to you. And we hope that the charts we have done for you this season will remind your family members of the love and heritage that envelops them. I am gratified to have made so many new friends in our associations with you. Thank you.

We so love genealogists--they are phenomenal people to work with.

As soon as we get the last orders off this morning, I'm going to make cookies with my kids for the rest of the day. I hope you and yours have a beautiful holiday season.

My first responsibility for UGA

You will never believe what happened last Saturday at the UGA meeting. I accepted a nomination as Vice President because I knew I was running against some fabulous people and I could never be elected. You should have seen my face. Astounded isn't even the word.

I'm so excited though. One of the things I really am passionate about is helping people improve their genealogy skills. I've grown tremendously with that the last couple of months and want to see others become better at it too. I'm amazed at how you can be a genealogist for many years and not necessarily get better at it. But UGA has been a wonderful source of genealogy education and I think it has even more potential ready to bloom.

So the first responsibility I've volunteered on for UGA is to tell you about Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and make sure as many of you as can take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. I've never been able to go because I was always working but I've always wanted to. But this is THE place for indepth knowledge taught by the experts. They have Paula Stewart Warren teaching the American Records track, Mary Hill teaching Mid-Atlantic Research, Kory Meyerink on Immigrant Origins, Tom Jones on Advanced Research Methodology and Craig Scott on US Military Records and several other wonderful instructors and topics. This is a great indepth look at these subjects. You can see the course outlines here. I'll be there. Hope to see you too.

The vibes are goin' on...

The last week has definitely been good for my ego. It is so nice to be appreciated by my peers. Especially people that I admire and appreciate so much.

Lisa Alzo has passed me the Genea-Speak award. Thank you so much Lisa for the kind words. I'm so honored to receive it from you. It is given "for excellence in writing, speaking, and the promoting of good genealogical practices." The requirement upon receiving the award is to pass it on to at least two deserving recipients. I am going to send it on to the two people who have completely inspired me this last couple of months. Ancestry Insider and Mark Tucker.

The Ancestry Insider keeps us up on two of genealogy's biggest entities Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com. I am honored to know the identity of and be able to work with AI and it seems every time I get to talk to him I come away with a shift of paradigm. He is a brilliant person and I look forward to learning lots more from him.

Mark Tucker from the Think Genealogy Blog is another of the great thinkers in the genealogy world. He has a wonderful graphical mind that he has used to come up with good ways to help beginners understand complex ideas. He also turned me on to the book Slideology. I look forward to learning lots more from Mark as well.



Lisa Louise Cooke and James Tanner have also both passed me the Kreative Blogger Award. I so appreciate their recognition and highly recommend their blogs to you as well. With this award, I have to reveal 7 things you may not know about me and then recommend 7 more blogs to you.

1. I "know" (read: have studied) German, Greek, Contemporary and Ancient Hebrew, Standard and Colloquial Arabic and Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

2 My favorite sandwich is cream cheese and raspberry jam, and my favorite color is purple.

3. I spent a week in the Massai Mara Game Preserve. Giraffes are absolutely beautiful in the wild.

4. The last 5 months have totally overhauled my research methodology in genealogy. But I haven't talked about that much on my blog yet.

5. I've decided to write a book. Don't hold your breath, but I think I have something to say. You'll catch some of it here I'm sure.

6. I am going to begin teaching in the Genealogy Program at Salt Lake Community College in January.

7. I am astounded to have been elected last weekend as the Vice President of the Utah Genealogical Association for 2010 (more on that in the next post.)

For the Kreative Blogger Award, I pass the baton to:
Carolyn L Barkley Genealogy and Family History.com
Renee Zamora Renee's Genealogy Blog
Elyse Doerflinger Elyse's Genealogy Blog
Tom Kemp at Ask the Genealogist
Marlo Schuldt The Heritage Collector's Blog A brand new blog by a great writer.
Elizabeth O'Neal Little Bytes of Life (and she beat me barely so I'm counting it anyway.)
the Footnote Maven Shades of the Departed. (The master.)

Go check them out and tell them I said hi.

UGA Board Member.

So guess what? Another bit of wonderful news this morning. You are reading the blog of a new Utah Genealogical Association board member. Whatdaya know? I hope I can be useful to them. I think it is quite possible that I have no idea what I'm getting myself into. Looking forward to our first meeting on Saturday. I'll let you know.

Our new mission statement

Last month at the ICAPGEN conference, I went to a presentation by Crista Cowan where she talked about doing an annual "wilderness retreat" to re-evaluate personal and company goals, and what that means for where the company is headed. So Kim and I decided to try it, and last weekend we took off to get back to the all important questions about what the ultimate goals of Generation Maps are and where that needs to lead us in the future.

Out of that came a new/revised mission statement. It is strong and powerful to me and I'm so excited to share it with you.

Generation Maps exists to visually express a family's history, which helps spread throughout that family:
--the feeling of love that comes from knowing they are enveloped in a family.
--the confidence of realizing the potential embedded in their inherited traits.
--the nurture of emotional healing by creating more understanding of their family's past.
--and the spiritual power of family history.
We strive to make these things constantly present in the daily life of the family's members.

I'm also happy to report that this is exactly what I want to do with my life. I honestly believe that family history is vitally important and literally can solve the world's problems. I came home so energized that I couldn't wait to get back to work this morning--even more so than usual.

Thank you to Mary Hill, Robert Raymond, Erin Roudabush, Pat Carpenter, Bruce Buzbee, Holly Hanson and others who have helped me think things out and lay the ground work for our new direction.

And just wait to see what we have up our sleeves for 2010. You're going to love it.

Wow. I'm Geneasmacked.

I'm Verklempt. Or perhaps Geneasmacked.

Tamura Jones named the Chart Chick the best genealogy vendor blog in his 2009 Geneablog Awards. I'm so honored to be recognized by such a well respected blogger. Thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving from our house to yours

From a newsletter we sent out a couple of years ago:

One of our treasured Thanksgiving recipes comes from rural Wisconsin where Kim grew up. Kim's mother taught us how to make it the way her mother made it and we are so grateful she did. We miss her now that she has passed on, but are grateful to remember her every year at Thanksgiving with this dish.

1/2 Orange peel,

2 Oranges peeled,

2 Apples, cored with peel left on,

1 cup nuts (we prefer pecans)

1 pound cranberries.

Grind each ingredient in a food processor until chunky. Mix together in a mixing bowl and add sugar to taste.

I know you've probably already eaten this Thanksgiving, but this recipe is good with lots of different main dishes, or any other big dinner you might have coming up for the holidays.

We hope you enjoy your family's traditions this year, and then continue to make more of your own.

Ten questions to ask around the table on Thanksgiving.

From our newsletter.

I've gathered for you a few conversation starters:

1. What are the most important lessons you've learned so far in your life?
2. What was the greatest time of joy in your life? The greatest time of sadness?
3. Who were your favorite relatives? Do you remember any of the stories they used to tell you?
4. What has been your favorite family tradition?
5. What personality traits do you admire and how have you tried to develop those traits?
6. What was the biggest turning point in your life? Looking back, how would you have dealt with it if you had known what you know now?
7. What was your most embarrassing moment?
8. What are you most proud of? Is there anything you have always wanted to do and haven't?
9. How would you describe your sense of humor? What was your all-time favorite practical joke?
10. What message would you like to leave your descendants? How would you like to be remembered?

One of my greatest regrets, is that when Kim's mother died and the family gathered together, I didn't have a tape recorder running as the everyone reminisced and told wonderful stories about their memories of her. Luckily, we do have other records that she left us. But I hope you will capture those great memories while people are remembering better than I did.

These questions actually work after Thanksgiving too. In fact, did you know that next Friday is actually a National Day of Listening in the US? There is a wonderful National Day of Listening website set up by StoryCorps that can give you further ideas, including a Do-It-Yourself Instruction Guide and Question Generator. And there are great stories that people have submitted too. Or try the easy to use software Personal Historian, a full featured software designed to help you capture the wonderful stories in your family's history.

RootsMagic Releases Free Genealogy Software

SPRINGVILLE, Utah. — November 18, 2009 — RootsMagic, Inc. announced the immediate availability of RootsMagic Essentials, free desktop genealogy software based on their award-winning RootsMagic 4 system. RootsMagic Essentials contains many core features found in its namesake and is the only completely free desktop genealogy software certified to work with the New FamilySearch system.

Essential Features for Everyone

“Many of our users have told us that they have friends and family members who are interested in getting started in family history but aren’t ready to invest in a more comprehensive package like RootsMagic,” said Bruce Buzbee, president. “RootsMagic Essentials gives them the features they need to start researching and recording their family tree at a price that can’t be beat—free!”

RootsMagic Essentials shares many of the same features with the full RootsMagic software including clean and friendly screens, the ability to add an unlimited number of people and events, pictures and media management, the SourceWizard to write your source citations for you, powerful merging and clean-up tools, dozens of reports and charts, support for international character sets, FamilySearch integration, and the ability to share data with other people and software programs. The full version of RootsMagic is available for purchase and includes features not available in RootsMagic Essentials.

New FamilySearch Made Easy

As a FamilySearch certified application, RootsMagic Essentials bridges the gap between your personal family history data and the New FamilySearch internet site. It can seamlessly share your family tree with others through New FamilySearch as well as retrieve the information that you don't have. It also simplifies cleaning up, combining, and correcting information.

RootsMagic is the first software certified to reserve and request LDS temple ordinances. It identifies persons that need ordinances, checks for duplicate ordinances, and reserves ordinances for you to complete. When you are ready, RootsMagic will even print an ordinance request at home that can be taken directly to the temple to print the actual ordinance cards.

Perfect Upgrade for PAF

Users of the PAF genealogy software will discover that their software is unable to directly work with New FamilySearch. RootsMagic Essentials has all of the fundamental features of PAF combined with New FamilySearch integration and much more. It also makes the transition painless by directly reading all of your information from PAF.

Free and Available Now

RootsMagic Essentials is available now for free at http://www.rootsmagic.com. Users of other genealogy software products will find it easy to experiment with RootsMagic Essentials using their own data. RootsMagic Essentials can directly import data from PAF, Family Tree Maker (through 2006), Family Origins, and Legacy Family Tree. It can also read and write data using the popular GEDCOM format.

"We're excited to make RootsMagic Essentials available to the community," said Michael Booth, vice-president. "Our mission is to provide 'software to unite families' and our hope is that RootsMagic Essentials will encourage more people to record their family trees and connect with their family histories".

About RootsMagic, Inc.

For over 20 years, RootsMagic, Inc. has been creating computer software with a special purpose—to unite families. One of our earliest products- the popular "Family Origins" software, introduced thousands of people to the joy and excitement of family history.

That tradition continues today with "RootsMagic", our award-winning genealogy software which makes researching, organizing, and sharing your family history fun and easy. "Personal Historian" will help you easily write and preserve your life stories. "Family Reunion Organizer" takes the headaches out of planning those important get-togethers. And "Family Atlas" creates beautiful and educational geographic maps of your family history.

For more information, visit http://www.rootsmagic.com.

Source: RootsMagic, Inc.

What have we been working on?

We have been doing fun photo charts for Christmas already and I got brave yesterday and asked a few of the customers I've been working with if I could show you some thumbnails. I'm always to shy to ask because I know these are so personal. So if you ever have a chart we've created for you that you are willing to share, let me know. Here are some recent comments we've received.

• You are the master. It looks perfect.
• WOW!! and Fantastic!! Somehow these don’t even seem to express how great this is turning out to be. Your creativity and talent are amazing. (Plus your patience with all of our many additions and changes)
• I think it looks terrific! And the tree in the background sets it off perfectly.

It's so fun to make our customers so happy. And not to brag ;-) but we get comments like this all the time. These charts look great, but when you see them with your own family the response is always fantastic.
Our online preview system is really personalized. Once you submit your chart and tell us what you are envisioning, we will put together the chart for you. Then you'll receive an email with a webpage link to your chart preview. At that point, you can request changes on anything and we will work back and forth with you until it is exactly what you are envisioning. And we can come up with anything you are envisioning too. Remember, the deadline for Christmas orders on our decorative charts is December 5th.