Arizona Family History Expo Day #2

Mesa turns out to be a lot cooler today with some clouds. We can go months without seeing rain, clouds aren't than uncommon. The Arizona Family History Expo seems very well attended. I taught a class on the FamilySearch Research Wiki in a large auditorium and nearly all the seats were filled. I am continually amazed. When I ask how many of the attendees know about the Research Wiki, I got about three or four hands. This is not a very good indication of market penetration. I think it gives a good indication of the breadth of genealogical resources online. We are not all chasing the same few sites, there are a huge number of sites to look at and use.


FamilySearch has another website that languishes in obscurity. That is the TechTips site. From the comments made on the posts, I can only assume that this is an extremely valuable website, but the number of people who recognize the site name is even smaller than those who recognize the Research Wiki. It makes me wonder how many really obscure, but valuable, websites there are out there in the online world?


Last evening, I participated in a panel discussion about genealogy and social media. I have found Google+ to be more focused than Facebook primarily because of the way the Google+ Circles allow you to easily select those with whom you wish to associate. I think that there is a place for both. The comments from audience were interesting in showing that a relatively small percentage of genealogists use Facebook regularly and even fewer were acquainted with Google+. One of the values of these genealogy conferences is giving a large group of genealogists the opportunity to at least hear about all the changes and new resources appearing on the Internet.