The Snowy Day

In Ezra Jack Keats picture book "The Snowy Day"  that I read many times to my children, the main character, Peter, goes outside to enjoy the delights of new fallen snow.

Today I find myself preparing for the Rootstech Conference in Salt Lake City where the snow has been falling steadily all day. When I announced on Facebook that I was going to stay in my hotel room all day one of my genimates commented "The hotel? When you could go to the Family History Library?"

Well I'm not Peter so I have stayed indoors and passed on the opportunities to play in the snow. Hopefully the weather will improve and I can visit the library tomorrow or next week. Thankfully I don't have many items on my lookup list this year.

From the hotel window

So what have I been playing at?

I have set up my calendar for the next week. I have dinners arranged for Saturday- Tuesday with various groups of genimates. I am interviewing some of the keynote speakers at Rootstech so I have done a bit of homework on them so that I don't appear like a complete ignoramus. So far I am interviewing the CEO of Familysearch, the CEO of Ancestry.com, Keynotes Scott Hamilton and Henry Louis Gates, some bods from Findmyast and Living DNA and CeCe Moore.   I'm also hoping to catch author Nathan Dylan Godwin and  DNA Painter hero Jonny Perl. 

I have written a couple of welcome posts for new members of the GeneabloggersTRIBE, filled out a survey (you can do it too) for the Rootstech people and responded to many social media messages.

I searched Amazon for the Whitelines notebook that my clever Genimate Shelley wrote about in her recent post and ordered one to try out at the conference.

Now I am going to indulge in some me research time and take a look at my hints on Ancestry.com. I don't accept these on face value. If they are from user submitted trees I don't pay much attention to them but if they relate to documents I look at them carefully, evaluate them and if they are a match that adds value to my tree I add the details to my own Family Historian database as well as my Ancestry tree. 

Perhaps I'll have some startling discoveries to share in the coming days.

I am pleased to have had a Snowy Day that has allowed me to indulge my geneaself. 

That's ice outside my wondow

Paul Draws a Winner

When my Rootstech Free Pass Giveaway Competition closed I needed to select a winner. I decided to put the entrants names into a hat and get Mr GeniAus to draw the winner.....but then I had a brainwave.

As yesterday was The Hornsby Shire Family History Group Meeting and our guest was Paul Parton from Familysearch I thought it would be a good idea to invite Paul to draw the winning entry. Thanks to Paul and fellow members who allowed me a couple of minutes to do this in a public forum.

Who is it Paul?

It's Lilian Magill

I was over the moon when one of my genimates names was drawn out. The lucky winner drawn by Paul was Lilian Magill, President of Bankstown Family History Group. Lilian so enjoyed her trip to Rootstech this year that she has already registered for 2017. This prize worth $US299 will lighten the load on Lilian's purse.

CONGRATULATIONS LILIAN

Contest entrants were asked :"To enter this contest you are asked to search the internet and find a link to a blog post, video or photo that shows me and someone famous or infamous I have met or interviewed at a previous Rootstech OR If you have a picture of you and me together at Rootstech you can share that in a new post."

Lilian blogged this image of some cold Aussies at Rootstech 2016.