School Holiday Fun...

...or the way to a grandmother's heart.

Eight year old grandson interrogating my family history website yesterday. He even found an error.

We followed this up with an inspection of Great-Grandpa's military medals. 

Then later when Grandson was scavenging in a coat cupboard he found his 4x Great-Grandfather's shillalegh which we were able to relate to the Irish side of the family previously found on the family website.

Reflections Hangout

Although I have hung up my Official Congress Blogger hat I couldn't resist asking some of my genimates to share their thoughts on Congress 2015 in a Google Hangout on Air last night.

As well as hearing about their favourite speakers and what inspired them the panelists last night shared some ideas to make Congress 2018 even better than 2015 and then put forward some compelling reasons as to why a genie shoould attend a Congress.

During the Hangout Fran talked about connecting with young people. At the moment I have a 14 year old granddaughter staying with me. She saw me preparing for the hangout and asked what it was, I tried to explain. This morning as we were having breakfast in bed she asked how the hangout went. As I had my phone beside me I connected to Youtube and played some of the hangout for her. Her reaction "That's cool". Made me think about the way we share family stories, perhaps geneavlogging is the way to go.

Those who joined me and shared their opinions made this Hangout rather beaut. Thanks for your generosity. Please watch the Hangout right here.

The Other end of the spectrum

I have two more speaking engagements this month for The Ku-ring-gai Seniors' Festival and an appearance on the Unlock the Past/Gould Genealogy stand at The Botany Bay Family History Society Heritage Fair on March 29th. I also hope to host a Hangout or two.

The audiences I address contain many silver-haired people and those whom hairdressers help to keep the silver at bay. Sometimes a few youngsters in their twenties or thirties may even come along. The audiences are usually mixed but the females well and truly outnumber the blokes.

I am very excited about the only gig I have planned for April before Mr GeniAus and I take off on our next overseas adventure. For starters I expect that there will be around twenty males and only one female (apart from me) in attendance at this exclusive event. If any youngsters in their twenties or thirties were to join us they would feel positively ancient.

One of my offspring told the group leader that I was an expert in genealogy (nice to see he has an inflated opinion of his Mum) and offered my services to speak to the group.

I am very excited that I will be talking to Year 1 students and their teacher at The King's School in Parramatta about my passion, family history. I will have to draw on my history as a Children's and Primary School Librarian and Teacher so that I won't bore the socks of them. I am also reminded of the Jesuit boast , 'Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man,'. 

These chaps are either 6 or 7 years old,  I wonder if, in half an hour or so I can hook a few future family historians.

These chaps will be my audience on April 1

Youth at Rootstech

In his address to the Official Bloggers at their pre Rootstech dinner Familysearch CEO, Dennis Brimhall, emphasised the need to get young people interested and involved in family history. To that end the Rootstech organisers nominated Day 3 of Rootstech as a youth day.

Nearly 2,000 young people aged between 12 and 18 registered to come along to the conference on Saturday. My mate DearMyrtle was so proud to have some of her grandchildren visit, I saw a mob of youngsters in Scout uniforms wandering around and observed Paul Nauta nattering with a group of teens in the media hub. The average age of Rootstech attendees plummeted on Saturday.

Proud Grandmother DearMyrtlewith her granddaughter

I had met a young man, Eli, earlier in the week and was pleased to see that he had come along for the Saturday activities. I asked Eli and his Dad if I could conduct a video interview with Eli and I was thrilled to be able to have a quick chat with hin. You will be as impressed as I was with this confident and eloquent 13 year old genealogist. Please take a look at my interview with Eli.