Metro New York
Genealogy and Computers Group

Affiliated with NYPC, NYMUG, PAF and Legacy Software Users' Groups

2012-2013 Meeting Schedule

Upcoming Events

For updates on the meeting topics and last minute change of dates, be sure to subscribed to the mailing list so that you can stay abreast of time and date changes and information relating to the group. All meetings are now held at the:

Tuesday, 11 Sept 2012, 6:00-8:00 pm

Topic: Disasters & Genealogy
In memorium, our meeting today on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 Al Quaeda attack, our topic for the evening is tracking ancestors and living family through media coverage, eye-witness accounts, and family stories of natural and man-made disasters. Every tragedy recorded in history has some records of the individual lives touched by loss, displacement, and hopefully healing and recovery. Our presentation covers sources, untangling family legends, online databases and timelines for research in these areas and some thoughts on presenting the emotions of the story in your family writing. Coming from floods, battles, volcanic eruptions, epidemics, ship and train (or even car) wrecks there are observer accounts, "official" reports, and often materials from efforts in clean up and recovery. So too, every disaster that touches our family may affect the records and histories available to us as researchers.
 

Tuesday, 2 October 2012, 6:00-8:00 pm

Topic: Roots: Edible & Other; Guest Speaker: Rhoda E. Kleiman
Family recipes are fabulous cultural clues to family history, great memories, and stories that go with each dish – we'll go from Stovetop to Desktop (publishing). We'll begin with a quick overview of software choices to help guide and generate a family cookbook project from start to finish. In 2011, our guest speaker Rhoda took on the task of assembling a community cookbook From Our Fig Tree to Yours for her congregation. For us, she'll share insights and lessons learned about organizing a loosely connected group of folks, motivating them to contribute, and then gathering, assembling, editing, publishing, and distributing a collective work by and about the community.
 
Following a brief career in the business world (including a stint at UNESCO) and raising three children, she turned to her first interests in Librarianship. With 25 years of NYC Jr. and Sr. High School experience and ten more successful years as a consultant to other school and corporate libraries, Rhoda is a superb teacher. She served as editor of the newsletter for the New York Chapter of Ikibana International (floral arranging) and for several Bonsai Society newsletters. She's also a GREAT and a master HOSTESS!
 

Tuesday, 6 November, 2012, 6:00-8:00 pm

Topic: Social Networking, Security, and Me! – We'll take a look at safe practices when getting involved in social networking and blogging (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc). Following a short presentation we'll go open format to address DOs and DON'Ts when using these communication tools for genealogy and family history. Bring your questions, concerns, and success stories.
 
REMINDER: Don't forget to vote before attending the meeting.
 

Tuesday, 4 December, 2012, 6:00-8:00 pm

Topic: Preserving Family Heirlooms From photographs to farm tools – catch up on the latest technology and best practices for basic conservation, preservation, and sharing (exhibition). We started last month with a discussion of helping wet photographs. We'll continue with the photo preservation discussion and then cover easy tips and good planning for other family archival items. Common sense solutions for home use and how to plan to preserve objects in metal, stone, glass, textiles, etc. When do I take something to a professional? Determining if an object is worth preserving? As always bring your questions, concerns, and success and horror stories.
 

Tuesday, 8 January, 2013, 6:00-8:00 pm

Topic: CHANGE OF TOPIC! James N. Oppenheim of TV (Today Show) and Web (jamesgames.com, toyportfolio.com) technology pundit, and keen user and observer of technology trends. He'll present a great how-to overview of Using Online Publishers (Blob, Lulu, etc.) to produce short runs of your own book. From content prep to finished product!
 
POSTPONED: Happy GNU Deer! – Software assits to help your writing. Online dictionaries, lexicons, thesaurae and editing tools.
 

Tuesday, 5 February, 2013, 6:00-8:00 pm

Topic: Photo Editing Software and Genealogy Databases More and more family historians have jumped onto the VISUAL technology wagon adding images to our databases. This session looks at choices (Photoshop to Freebies), tips, tools, and best practices for the family historian. Most importantly, we'll look at attaching (or embedding) images of people and documents into your favorite genealogy database software: best file type, image size, etc. Then, once images are attached, what can we do with them?
 

Special Thank YOU! Last month gadget pundit and media blogger James Oppenheim stepped in "last minute" to cover the session with a look at some new technologies. Great thanks go out to him. Also to McKelden Smith and Naomi Joshi of New York G&B for stepping in and giving us an update on the NY State Genealogy Resource Guide and Gazetteer!
 

Tuesday, 5 March, 2013, 6:00-8:00 pm

Topic: Web Research Update! What's new and updated on popular family history research sites? Get a look at the latest online research sites, databases, and resources. The quantity and growing quality of web resources (free and paid) is increasing daily. Keeping up can be hard to do. This overview, for everyone from beginner to expert, can help you find unknown tools, and assist in weeding out what is irrelevant to you. We do this program about once every two years — bring along the URL(s) for your favorites to share — from ethnic or geo specific to how-to and general research.
 

Tuesday, 2 April, 2013, 6:00-8:00 pm

Topic: Happy GNU Deer! Family History always starts with writing. For this year's annual session on "Best Software Tools", we'll take a look at software and apps that offer assists to our writing, indexing, and automated development of biographies and genealogies. We'll start with the tools built into popular genealogy software and then add in online dictionaries, lexicons, thesaurae and organizing and editing tools. This session was originally scheduled for the December meeting.
 

Tuesday, 7 May, 2013, 6:00-8:00 pm

Topic: Get Your Head in the Cloud! The hottest technology buzzwords in genealogy and computers for the last year or so are THE CLOUD! Join us for an open discussion: what is it? How is it of use to Family Historians? How will it change my computing habits over the next several years? Is it SAFE? Are there software systems that already make use of Cloud technology to help my research and sharing? Explore these key questions and more!
 
Notes from this meeting courtesy of Michelle Frager.
 

Tuesday, 8 June, 2012, 6:00-8:00 pm

Topic: Annual Ask the Experts Panel! Join us in an open exchange about brick walls, tough to decode documents, elusive family members, etc.
 
Got a difficult question to crack the case on your genealogy? The best thing to do is to send David Kleiman a description and details of your issue before the meeting ( gensig@heritagemuse.com). We'll take a shot at having answers ready for you at the meeting (we will not answer questions for this session via email – this is for meeting attendees only, please)
 

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