First Round in Yuma

Yuma, Arizona is a smaller city right on the border with California and Mexico, near the mouth of the Colorado River. There are two genealogy conferences here in the next week, one today sponsored by the Yuma Family History Center and one on Tuesday, 17 January 2012, sponsored by Family History Expos. I am here in Yuma today and will be again on Tuesday.

The Family History Center conference is very well attended for a smaller conference. I would guess there are a little more than 200 people here for a full day of classes. I did a class on the FamilySearch Wiki and another on FamilySearch.org. At the time of this writing I will still have another class later today on Google tools for genealogists. Very good audiences and good response with good questions. I am impressed with the organization and content of the conference, put on entirely with volunteers from the Family History Center. It is a lot of work but they have done a fabulous job.

I was not surprised when I polled my audience, that no one, not one person had every heard of the FamilySearch TechTips website. By hiding this valuable site away with an obscure link, the site is essentially invisible, unless you happen to stumble across it looking for information.

No surprise however, in finding out that almost no one has ever heard of the FamilySearch Wiki. Both the Wiki and TechTips are extremely valuable websites but have virtually no visibility on the FamilySearch.org site. Hopefully, this might change in the not too distant future.

I think local conferences and seminars are extremely valuable because people get a chance to meet other genealogists on a local basis.