SIR’s Genealogy Group Meeting

March 3, 2009

108th Meeting

1.           Roll Call.

2.           The Next regular Meeting for this Group is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, April 7, 2009. So, everyone please mark their calendar.

3.           Today, Russ Brabec will be giving us a slide presentation of his trip that he took last year across the United States looking at historical sites, and seeing his name “Brabec” on a Street Sign. Thanks to Don Brozzo who will furnish us with his projection equipment for the showing of these slides. We will get back to Russ after our regular business.

4.           Is there any other Old Business or New Business that we should take care of before moving on?

5.           The next meeting of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society will be on Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 7:30 P. M. in the Main Conference Room of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The speaker for the this meeting will be Steve Morse, who will talk on “Hodgepodge”. Steve gave a great presentation at the Spring Seminar that was held at the San Mateo County Genealogical Society last year. He will update this presentation about the “One Step Website” that he created, and for which he has received numerous awards. In his other life, he is a computer professional with a doctorate degree in electrical engineering. He is best known as the architect of the Intel 8086, which sparked the PC revolution 25 years ago.

6.           The meeting that was held on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 by the San Mateo County Genealogical Society was a great meeting, and those who didn’t attemd missed a great presentation. There was only three of us who attended. Myself, Bob Shoemaker, and Rick Dusine. The speaker was Richard Rands, who talked on “Organizing Your Stuff”. Being organized is an enormous challenge with today’s fast moving and efficient research methodologies. Keeping on top of the material we accumulate and organize it in a way that will make it easy to store, track, and access is frustrating. This presentation offered new ideas and help you develop the skills and methods that will make it possible implement and efficient storage, tracking, and access system for your genealogy stuff.

Essentially, the topic discussed how one could store information and data that one has accumulated in boxes, cartons, and other places of storage. In other words, its storage of hard copy materials, not the material that one stores on one’s computer. Its material such as birth certificates, death certificates, military records, and all records of this type that one does not want to destroy. They get tossed into boxes with other junk where it will get lost and unable to find easily. It is not a very complicated system, but is not a system that everyone would like for a storage system. What most everyone would like is to have everything in folders in alphabetical order, such as folder A, then folder B, etc. The problem with this form of system is that what is in folder A may have several subjects that one would be interested in someday, and how is one to refer to them.

To solve this problem, instead of having folders in alphabetical order, have them in numerical order. So the first thing to go into the first folder is what comes out of the box of materials that one has all his documents in, and the second one would be in the second folder. What is in each of these folders is controlled by an index file in one’s computer, where all the data in Folder 1 is listed, in alphabetical order. There may be more than one piece of information in Folder 1, but that will show up in the index file in your computer. Richard’s motto was: Easy to Use, Versatile and Flexible, Inexpensive, Expandable, and Effective.

7.           As I have reported before, the San Mateo County Genealogical Society contractual agreement with La Cañada College to have their library housed in the library at La Cañada, Negotiations are still slowly progressing. The outlook is still very positive, and they hope for some final decision soon. The latest information is that the final agreement could possibly be concluded by this June, and the library could possibly be moved by the first of next year. Maybe Bob Shoemaker has more recent information.

8.           Now, as a last reminder, San Mateo County Genealogical Society’s Spring Seminar will be presented next month on Saturday, April 4, 2009. So, don’t miss this one. The title of the Seminar is “The Women In Our Lives - Finding the Records of our Female Ancestors”. It will be presented at the 1^st Presbyterian Church in San Mateo, form 9:00 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. The Keynote Speaker will be Cath Madden Frindle. If anyone has not received the new flyers, speak up now. This is your last chance. I have copies of the new flyers for anyone who does not have one so he can sign up and send in their contribution. For the amount of information that one receives from such a seminar, the price is right. For members, it is $25.00, for nonmembers, it is $28.00, and for lunch, it is $8.00 more. You will also receive a SYLLABUS for the show. In addition to the keynote speaker, there will also be 5 featured speakers, namely Pamela Dallas, Gayle Simons, Deborah Ostenberg, Janet Brigham Rands, and Rose Mary Kennedy. The topics are “What was Grandma’s Maiden Name”, Marriage, Divorce, and Inheritance”, “Ladies and their Organizations”, “Soldier’s Widows – Marriage & Pensions”, “Women in LDS Databases”, “Women of the West”, “Crossing the Pond -  Passengers & Citizens”, and “Land in her own Name – Women Homesteaders”. What more could one possibly ask for such a demonstration? So sign up early, or you might be too late. The premises can only handle 100 people. They had 103 participants at the November meeting. This will be another great show, so don’t miss it.

9.           Again, for those of you who are just dying to get more Genealogical information, the National Genealogical Society will be having their conference in Raleigh, North Carolina this year on May 13 to the 16, 2009. I know that everyone here missed the National Meeting that was held in May of last year, so here is your chance to make up for it. There were 1,600 attendees at the meeting last May, so it was considered a very successful conference. There were 50 speakers who presented exceptionally high-quality programs. The topic of the conference is “The Building of a Nation from Roanoke to the West.”. This is the 31^st National Genealogical Society Conference in the States and Family History Fair. The conference will take place in the brand new Raleigh Covnention Center, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hotel accommodations are in the adjoining Marriott Hotel or nearby at the Sheraton Hotel. For more detailed information, go to the website http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/. For those of you who will be attending or just plain interested, I am passing around the syllabus for the complete conference. Please read it over in complete detail.

10.                       For those who are interested, the National Archives and Records Administration, have announced their Workshop Schedule for 2009.

All workshops will be conducted by Rose Mary Kennedy at NARA-Pacific Region, 1000 Commodore Drive, San Bruno, CA 94066-2350. To register and reserve a space, contact: Rose Mary Kennedy 650-238-3488, or E-Mail her at rosemary.kennedy@nara.gov. The cost is $15.00, payable in advance.

11.      Several people have asked me what charities does the Silicon Valley Community Foundation support. In addition to furnishing this room for our meetings as well as many other nonprofit organizations, it furnishes funds for feeding children and families who are in need, and furnish funds to several nonprofit organizations. The Foundation currently works with 39 corporations in supporting these needs, including Adobe, Cisco, eBay, Electronic Arts, McAfee, Microsoft, and Shutterfly. The Foundation helps them meet their social responsibility goals and create their brands of philanthropy. Last year the Foundation raised 190 million dollars. Some 39 companies and 84 nonprofit organizations partner with them to create innovative solutions to pressing needs. The Foundation’s community conference rooms have hosted 21,551 visitors and 839 meetings last year. There were 10,963 grants that were distributed through the endowment and philanthropic funds to nonprofits. I have a copy of the Foundation’s brochure in case anyone is interested in reading it over.

12.      In closing, I thought it would be interesting if I read the following short article entitled “How to Call the Police when You’re Old and Don’t move Fast Anymore”.

13.      One more that I couldn’t resist, entitled ”The Farmer and the Government”.

14.      Is there any questions or more information that one wishes to bring before us.

15.      And now, I will turn the meeting over to Russ Brabec for his super presentation that he has for us.

16.      I have placed all of my meeting discussions onto the SIR’s Website in case you would like to refer to some of them. In the Genealogy Group on the Website, scroll down until you see the title “Monthly Genealogy Meetings”. Under this title you will see the dates of our past meetings. Click on any one of these dates and you will see the discussions that we talked about at each of these meetings. I have changed the format at this point a little, and have placed all the Monthly Genealogy Meetings for 2007 into a single folder titled “2007 Genealogy Meetings”. The monthly meetings for 2008 will be shown individually until the end of the year, and they also will be placed in a 2008 folder. This will save a great deal of space and make it much easier to look up the meetings.