Two Surprises in One Day

Yesterday I received a notification telling me that this blog had made it on the list of Feedspot's 100 Best Genealogy Blogs and Websites in 2025.

https://bloggers.feedspot.com/genealogy_blogs/

I am flabbergasted and honoured to find my little blog, that was launched in 2008, ranked in a very healthy spot seventeen years later on this list of international genealogy blogs.

Coincidentally the power of blogs to preserve and share family stories also hit home yesterday.

Just yesterday I found a new 1st cousin once removed as the result of a large DNA match popping up. On contacting me this young man said "Only recently have I started hearing about the family but always been curious hence why I finally did the test". and then "I was interested as we never knew our real grandparents and their backgrounds and also just curious to know how far back we go and the rest."

Over the years I have blogged the stories of this chap's ancestors in posts on my GeniAus blog. I may have overwhelmed him but I was able to quickly share links to stories about his grandparents, earlier generations, his aboriginality, his convict ancestors, war heroes etc. He now has plenty of time to digest this info over the coming weeks and months. I am thrilled that I have a resource that can help new to me cousins discover their backgrounds. 

The power of blogging to preserve the stories of earlier generations cannot be underestimated.

A Golden Old Girl

Earlier today I received an email from John D Reid which stated "Congratulations. Your genealogist colleagues have voted you #1, gold award, superstar genealogist for Australia/NZ for 2015" and a  request that I keep the news embargoed until the Official Announcement went live.

Keeping mum has been difficult as I was rather excited to read the news in John's email. Having managed to contain my excitement for several hours I am now able to share the link to John's Golden Announcement. 

Congratulations to all those who received awards and to all those who were nominated for this award, to be included on this list is a golden achievement. That my name came out on top in Australia/New Zealand is a wonder to me. I am so proud to see my name on the Golden List with CeCe Moore, Dave Obee, Kirsty Gray and Claire Santry.

I thank all those Genimates who voted for me in this competition and John D Reid for organising this activity which does much to promote genealogy and genealogists internationally. I recognise the multitude of volunteers who work in genealand and provide resources and services that help people like me reach Gold Status.

As I proudly accept this award I will remember all those Golden Genies on whose shoulders I stand.

A Proud Old Genie

I look after the website for our very new local Family History Group.

Tonight at the Annual Conference Dinner of the NSW and ACT Association of Family History Societies Inc our Group received The Dorothy Fellowes Website Encouragement Award for a website administered by a society member. As our Group’s media (and website) person I was thrilled that I was in attendance at the dinner and able to collect the award on behalf of our Group.

Congratulations to our northern neighbours, Wyong Family History Group, a group with a long history who won the major award.

I was so proud that our efforts as a new Group were recognised with this Encouragement Award. That our Group that has only been in existence  for seven months received recognition for our efforts is most pleasing.

You can visit our website here: https://hornsbysfhg.wordpress.com

Jill Ball, Media Officer, Hornsby Shire Family History Group receives our award from Dorothy Fellowes.

Aussies Rock

Reading Rocks and so does Genealogy

There is a healthy number of nominations for Australian Genealogists in the third annual Rockstar Genealogist Award organised by Canadian genealogist John D Reid. 

There is no way that we can bump the Americans off the top ten list but we should still cast votes for our fave Aussie and International stars. John will be publishing an Australian awwards list as he did last year. 

To cast your vote (it ionly takes a minute or two) this year (you need to do it this week) go to:
 http://anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/rockstar-genealogists-2014-voting-now.html

I'd be thrilled if I got a few votes again this year.

Basking in the Glory

On Friday in my post "Alona, you make me feel like dancing" I accepted  Alona Tester's nomination for a One Lovely Blog Award and nominated some other bloggers for the award.

Well, blow me down, today I find that I have another reason to dance. Queensland geneablogger, Alex Daw in a post on  the Family Tree Frog blog today nominated me for this award. In part Alex said "Yes, she's been nominated already but I can't not nominate her. But don't worry Jill you don't have to do this exercise all over again - just bask in the glory."

Thank you, Alex, for the nomination, I am humbled by your kind and generous words. Reading your seven things about yourself I find that quite a few apply to me - kindred souls?

Now I am off to aquaint my self with some of the blogs nominated by Alex, it's an interesting collection that is worth perusal.

How sweet it is....

Each week American family historan and geneablogger, Jana Iverson Last, publishes as a Follow Friday activity a list of Fab Finds consisting of blog posts she sees as worthy of mention. Randy Seaver, a genealogist and geneablogger from San Diego publishes a similar list, Best of the Genea-Blogs.

While liists such as these are subjective they are most valuable in directing those interested in reading and learning about family history to interesting and topical posts.

To be recognised by one's peers in such a list is always an honour, I get such a buzz when one of my posts is selected. While I don't blg for accolades I am trilled to be recognised.  Added advantagesare that new readers are directed to my blog and Australian geneablogging exposed to the world as a result of these shoutouts.

Yesterday Jana left this comment on one of my blog posts:

Jill,

I want to let you know that two of your blog posts are listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2014/06/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-june-27-2014.html

Needless to say that I was overwhelmed to find that two of my posts, Thinking of 9/11 AND In Praise of Indexes, were included in this weeks Fab Finds from Jana.

Thank you Jana for this honour and thank you for all the time and effort you put into your Fab Finds posts.

Why Me?

Thanks to John Reid from Anglo-Celtic Connections for hosting a number of geneapolls throughout the year. I always take part in these and find the results and John's analyses most illuminating.

John also hosts The Annual Rockstar Genealogists Awards.  When I looked at John's post announcing the nominations I was surprised to find my name on the list and was pleased to see a fair representation of Australians there. I still don't know who nominated me but I am most grateful.

I was very excited for my mate Shauna Hicks yesterday when I read that she was the Silver Medalist for Australia and New Zealand on a list of international genealogy megastars.

I got an enormous surprise earlier today when John let me know that I was the Gold Medalist  for Australia and New Zealand. When I emailed my husband to tell him the news he replied "what an elite group". I was humbled, surprised and gobsmacked to find my face on the page with the others in this group. I realise that more than a a few people must have voted for me in the poll, thanks to each and every one of you for your support.

With our relatively small population base downunder it is difficult for Australians and New Zealanders to gain a large number of votes in international contests. I thank John for creating an Australian/NZ category and for including so many worthy Australians on the list of nominations.

You can see the list of the  the top ten Rockstar Genealogists from Australia/New Zealand on Anglo-Celtic Connections tomorrow.

Your support for genealogy in our country is truly appreciated, John.

Thanks to a Stranger

Aussie Rockstar

I was perusing the list of contenders for Rockstar Genealogist status on John D. Reid's Anglo-Celtic Connections blog and found my name and those of some other Aussies on the list. I was surprised and delighted to see the land downunder represented.

John says that "Rockstar genealogists are those who give "must attend" presentations at family history conferences or as webinars. Who, when you see a new family history article or publication by that person, makes it a must buy. Who is it that you hang on their every word on a blog, podcast or newsgroup, or follow avidly on Facebook or Twitter?"

Was I surprised? You bet, my name is up there with some really big fish in the genealogy world. I want to thank whoever put my name on the list. I really appreciate the gesture.

Voting will start in the week following 8 September. Details will be posted on  Anglo-Celtic Connections.

I'm not Harry S Truman

"All my life, whenever it comes time to make a decision, I make it and forget about it." said Harry S Truman. (http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/choices/1/index.html)

I'm not Harry S. Truman.

When Ben from Inside History Magazine asked me to nominate this year's list of 50 blogs you need to read in 2013 I was honoured. It's always nice to get a repeat invitation because it means you must have done something right the first time.

In 2012 I tried to be objective with my choices; for this year's list I suggested to Ben that I must be more objective so I really did my homework. I read many articles on what makes a good blog, canvassed the opinions of fellow bloggers via Twitter and then set up a spreadsheet ((or assessment rubric in eduspeak)) listing the criteria against which I would assess the blogs. As this list was primarily for an audience of Australian and New Zealand  readers I favoured blogs from those areas or those foreign blogs with relevance to downunder peoples. I immediately eliminated many worthy blogs but this didn't concern me greatly because there are a number of blogging gongs in the northern hemisphere that they can earn.

My first source of blogs for consideration was from my many RSS subscriptions. I then did some Google searching for genealogy blogs from Australia and followed this by having a look at the lists of blogs that some of  my favourite bloggers follow. My list grew and I found that I had several hundred blogs to consider. Years of evaluating assessment tasks when I was an educator prepared me for the business at hand.

I visited all of these blogs until I had a list of 80+ blogs to consider seriously. It took me a few days to look at these blogs, measure them against my criteria and consider my gut instinct (the subjective element of the process) and come up with a list for Inside History Magazine. I sent them my Excel worksheet with 50 suggestions, additional strong maybes and the definitely don't bothers. Inside History Magazine had the final word, they scratched some of my choices, added a couple that were unknown to me and replaced a couple of others. When they sent me the final draft I only objected to one of their replacements and they changed that.

I am happy to stand behind my choices because I went through a thorough process to find and evaluate blogs but I'm not Harry Truman.

I keep searching for and thinking about potential blogs for the list. After we settled on the final list I said to Ben that I had just found some new blogs that looked promising but it was too late to consider them.

New blogs worth a look are:
Carr Family Search (New blogger Ed Carr is a member of my local historical society) http://ecarr357.blogspot.com.au/
Genealogically speaking from young blogger, Caitie G. http://genealogically-speaking.tumblr.com/
GenXalogy http://genxalogy.blogspot.com.au/
Hawkesbury Heritage & Happenings from Michele Nicholls (whose husband Jonathan Auld has a blog on the list) http://hawkesburyheritage.blogspot.com.au/
KK Genealogy Blog http://kkgenealogy.com/blog-2/
TNG Blog (love that software) http://tngsitebuilding.com/blog/

Just in case Inside History Magazine is going to repeat this exercise in 2014 (and invite me to be involved) I want to be prepared. If you come across any new blogs that should be considered for the list please let me know. I am especially interested in blogs from genealogy and historical societies where there is a dearth of good blogs. My RSS list expands daily but there is plenty of room for growth, please send me your links.

I'm interested in hearing what you think makes a great blog.

Surprise of the week

I was alerted on Social Media to a new list of "The Top 90 Genealogy Blogs", http://freepeoplesearch.org/blog/the-top-90-genealogy-blogs.html. I did not know the company behind this list I followed the link and started reading through the list of sites. I always enjoy lists like this as they provide potential new reading material.

The first category listed new blogs; all of these were new to me.  As I read through the remainder I saw many of the more popular North American blogs and a few international ones including a relatively new Australian one, KK Genealogy http://kkgenealogy.com/blog-2/ that I had not previously read. I am now following it in my RSS reader.

When I read the list more closely a second time I noticed a familiar blog title on the list, my other blog, Android Genealogy,   Androidgenealogy.blogspot.com. I was delighted to see this niche blog that has a much smaller readership than the Geniaus blog getting some recognition.

I do not know the people behind this list but I thank them for giving my blog a place on the list and making my day.

I backed some winners

A few years ago I decided to host my own family website, http://www.geniaus.net. After casting around for a while I settled on TNG (The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding) developed by Darrin Lythgoe from Utah. I have been delighted with the program and the support provided by Darrin and a dedicated band of users. Darrin told me last week at Rootstech that there are now 14,000 users of his program.

I was pleased to read this tonight on The TNG Facebook Page "Looks like it's official: TNG has won the 2013 Genealogy Readers' Choice Award for "Best Tool for Putting Your Family Tree Online"! Thanks everyone!"

Family Historian, the software program I use for maintaining my database on my computer, came in a close second to Roots Magic. I was pleased to meet and interview Simon Orde, the developer of Family Historian, at Rootstech. As soon as I get a hotel with a good internet connection I will post that interview on this blog.

Congratulations to both Darrin and Simon on your well-deserved accolades.

A full list of winners can be seen on the About.com site.

How sweet it is

A lovely surprise I received this week was a nomination for the Wonderful Team Member Readership Award. Jennifer Jones nominated me for this gong by writing " Jill from Geniaus for all the encouragement she gave me in my early days of blogging. I also look forward to participating in her creative Geneamemes." You can read all Jennifer's nominations here.

I firmly believe that blogging is a two-way street and I make a concerted effort to comment on a few blog posts in my RSS feed each day. 

I get such a buzz when someone takes the time to carry forward the conversation I have started in my blogs so I appreciate this opportunity to recognise a few of my readers who consistently leave comments on my ramblings. These readers not only comment on my blog, they support me on other social media platforms as well. 

As I believe in spreading the love I am choosing different people from those I nominated for the Blog of the Year 2012 Award; all of those nominees also comment regularly on my blog. 

Sharon Brennan The Tree of Me
Pauleen Cass  from Family history across the seas 
Celia Lewis of Twigs and Trees from Canada
Alona Tester from Lonetester
Jackie van Bergen Jax Trax
Kylie Willison Kylie's Genes

RULES OF THIS AWARD

(i)    Don’t forget to thank the nominator and link back to their site as well;
(ii)    Display the award logo on your blog;
(iii)   Nominate no more than fourteen readers of your blog you appreciate and
leave a comment on their blogs to let them know about the award;

Thank you to my readers, I appreciate all the comments you make on my blog - it's nice to know there is an audience actually reading what I write.  And thankyou again Jennifer for nominating me. You can find Jennifer's blog here

Blog of the Year Award

Many thanks to Catherine of Seeking Susan ~ Meeting Marie ~ Finding Family for nominating the Geniaus blog for the“Blog of the Year 2012 Award”.  Catherine wrote to me "Thankyou so much Jill for sharing so much knowledge and info... especially of the technological kind. As well as the daily E-News. It therefore gives me much pleasure to nominate you for the "Blog of the Year 2012" which Pauleen gifted to me."

Getting recognition from one's peers is special; thank you Catherine for your nomination of Geniaus  I am humbled and thrilled. 

Catherine nominated some of my favourite blogs as well as some I didn't know. You can see the full list here.

Nominating blogs for this award is difficult as there are so many fabulous ones out there in the blogisphere. My five nominations for today ( I make no apologies for the Australian bias) are:

• Diary of an Australian Genealogist - Shauna Hicks - A chatty journal with news, views and a slice of life
• Family History for You - Sharn White - Thoroughly researched articles
• The Family Recorder - Audrey Collins - Fascinating and quirky stories from the Mother Country
• Geneabloggers- Thomas MacEntee - The metablog for the genealogy world
• 'Genealogists for Families' project - Judy Webster - Details the progress of a brilliant geneaproject

The ‘rules’ for this award are simple:

1. Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award

2. Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award.

3. Please include a link back to this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award –http://thethoughtpalette.co.uk/our-awards/blog-of-the-year-2012-award/ and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)

4. Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them

5. If you choose, you can now join our Facebook group – click ‘like’ on this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience

6. As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars… For further information on collecting stars, just click on the link provided in Rule 3.

Congrats Hawkesbury Museum

Hawkesbury Regional Museum Wins the Award for Cutural and Heritage Tourism

Awarded Aussies

Yesterday The Queen’s Birthday 2010 Honours List was announced by the Governor-General.  666 Australians were the recipients of various awards. The Australian Honours Database is a very useful tool for family historians, as it houses details of 240,000 recipients of awards since Federation.

A search for John Brown returns quite a number of hits:

Each recipient record has a number of fields:

As well as the 240,000 short individual entries the Honoured Australians page tells the stories of some of these inspiring Australians.

Twigs of Yore

Shelley, from Twigs of Yore, another blogger who was included in the MyHeritage Top 100 list, yesterday weighed into the debate about these awards with her post In defence of my honour!

Pasted below is a copy of my response to Shelley's post:

My Geniaus blog was on the MyHeritage list and was chuffed to find myself there. When I received the initial email from MyHeritage telling me they were going to put my blog on a list and offering me a badge I didn't take much notice of it and ignored the message.

I was surprised when a few days later I found my blog listed in their Top 100. I was pleased, not just for myself, but for genealogy in Australia as there were a number of Australian blogs on the list. With our small population base we have a hard time getting noticed and noted in other 'best' lists that tend to feature North American blogs.

My Google Analytics reports show a spike in site visits around the time the awards were announced. I imagine this was the case for the other Aussie blogs listed. The MyHeritage Award has helped in telling the world that genealogy is thriving downunder.

I won't be removing my badge - I am honoured to have been noticed.

MyHeritage.com Announces Its Top 100 Genealogy Sites

MyHeritage.com Announces Its Top 100 Genealogy Sites

I am thrilled to find Geniaus' blog listed with such sites of distinction.

In a former life I was on the international judging panel for the The International Association of School Librarianship (IASL) Concord School Library Web Page Award. Evaluating the various sites nominated was an enjoyable activity. During my career in IT and Libraries I was webmaster for a number of educational websites. As a judge for the Concord Award I was not eligible to have my site nominated for an award.

Now semi-retired I still have a passion for online communication and enjoy playing with new applications. Being able to combine my love of genealogy with my interest in technology and trying to promote genealogy in Australia through my Geniaus blog and Geniaus family site gives me much pleasure. I now understand the excitement experienced by those Teacher-Librarians who won the Concord award. We all like a bit of positive reinforcement.

Receiving a listing on the MyHeritage.com list of Top 100 Genealogy Sites will give my little blog exposure to a broader audience. It has provided me with the impetus to work on updating and improving my blog.

Genealogy Insider - Announcing the Family Tree Magazine 40 Best Genealogy Blogs

Genealogy Insider - Announcing the Family Tree Magazine 40 Best Genealogy Blogs

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Congratulations to all of the nominated blogs. I am pleased to see that a couple of my favourites are in this list.

I enjoy reading Shades of the Departed and Footnote Maven by footnoteMaven. I enjoy Schelly Talalay Dardashti's Tracing the Tribe with its international coverage of Jewish Genealogy.

As someone with British Roots I particularly enjoy Scottish Genealogy News and Events by Chris Paton. With a bias towards Scotland and the UK but with a broader coverage this blog provides valuable news and information.

The list of top blogs is otherwise US centric. There may be others on the list that emanate from countries other than the US but I cannot readily identify them. Obviously it would be difficult, because of our small population base and short history, for an Australian blog that caters to a smaller interest base to make this list.

I wonder why there appear to be no other blogs from Europe and the UK (the lands of forefathers) on this list. Do people in these regions not read Family Tree Magazine's blog? Is genealogy blogging not popular in these regions?

Next year I will nominate Ancestors Magazine (from the National Archives - UK, The Wandering Genealogist from Sussex and The Professional Descendant from Edinburgh to the selection and a couple of Aussie contenders too.

Will you join me in adding some international flavour to the list of 40 top blogs in 2010?

Victorian Community History Awards 2009 (Victoria Online)

Congratulations to the winners of these awards.

Victorian Community History Awards 2009 (Victoria Online)

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