A Little More NGS!

I noticed that there are two tracks worthy of your attention at the NGS Conference in Las Vegas.  One is a skill building track by the Board for Certification of Genealogists and the other is devoted to technology. They both run at the same time so you are going to have to pick and choose what is important to you. If it were up to me I would take the skill building over the tech. You must know by now that I value basic genealogy skills over modern technology. Once you have your skills mastered, you can go to the individual websites and learn about all the apps that are available to enhance those skills.

The BCG track features lectures on Congressional records, research reports, accidental and intentional errors in vital records, 17^th century English/American documents, organization, digitized records, emigrant guides, and proof arguments. There is also a 2 hour seminar on Thursday morning where certified genealogists will share their experiences and offer tips for successful certification.The tech track covers Evernote, Scrivener, Web 2.0, clouds,  OCR’d and computer indexed, genealogy software, Mac, Google Earth, online catalogs,  genealogy apps, Microsoft Excel and Power Point, online publishing, photo restoration, and Pinterest.

As you can see there is an enormous amount of information in just these two tracks which run Wednesday thru Saturday. What you need to do is consult your syllabus if you have 2 sessions that are being held at the same time, skip the session that has the best notes in the syllabus. And remember you can always order a CD of either session.

Las Vegas sounds like a great place for a conference, but a little too tempting dollar wise for me.  I am opting for the OGS Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio and hopefully the FGS Conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana. During the past 2 weeks I have had cataract surgery. It was an amazingly simple procedure with the added benefit of not having to wear glasses any more. However, it left me with a few added expenses that I wasn’t counting on this year. As usual I will have to do some creative financing and hopefully I will be at the FGS Conference in August. But I will definitely be in downtown Cincinnati in a few short weeks.