Where am I working now?

This week, I dropped by the Brigham Young University Conference on Family History and Genealogy for a few minutes to say hello to some friends. I was immediately asked if I were presenting at the Conference. I explained that I was busy in other areas and had a number of family commitments during the week. But it did raise an issue as to what I am doing in genealogy. Not that anyone really cares, but I thought it might be interesting to see what I am doing.

First of all, my wife and I are serving as a volunteer missionaries at the Brigham Young University Family History Library. In conjunction with our service, we teach a number of classes every month to the other approximately 130 missionaries serving there and to the patrons of the Library. Personally, I am also working steadily on presenting six or seven live, online webinars each month. Those webinars are then recorded and uploaded to the BYU Family History Library YouTube Channel. Presently, cumulatively, we have uploaded over 150 videos and we have 1,677 subscribers as of the date of this post. During the month of August, 2016, I am scheduled to present seven more webinars.

In the past, I actively sought out speaking opportunities in conferences around the country. I am still scheduled to speak at several such events during the coming months, but they are mostly local and smaller. My emphasis for the past year or so has been on helping people one-on-one with their research. I am usually scheduling several such opportunities every week. I find this to be much more productive than teaching a class.

In addition, I am spending a great deal of time on my own research. I have been working on cleaning up my portion of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree and adding in new people from my research.

Of course, I have been writing my blogs. Cumulatively, the blogs have accumulated more than 4.5 million views. Of course, I get both positive and negative feedback about my posts, but for the time being I will keep writing. Lately, I have been trying to add more substantive content to the blogs. I also need time to do other things like visit with my family. We have been able to travel this summer and see all of our seven children and their spouses and our grandchildren for the first time in many years. If you look at WalkingArizona you can see where we have been and some of the things we have done.

We live busy, interesting and sometimes challenging lives.