Hidden Gems: Participate in David Rencher session

Sorry I’ve been silent these many weeks. First I was slurping up all the documents Ancestry.com scanned for me at the St. George conference. Then I’ve been preparing like a madman for the NGS conference. I can’t see any light yet at the end of the tunnel, but I’m dying to share some hidden gems with you. Most will be applicable anytime you’re in Salt Lake City. Today’s gem may be of interest to everyone.

Participation invited in NGS Conference session grand experiment

This message on the APG mailing list piqued my curiosity:

David Rencher (FamilySearch CGO) and team are conducting a grand experiment during the NGS Conference this week and you are invited to participate.

The session is titled "Doing Research in Real Time--An Exhilarating Collaboration Experience!" The premise is that a group of geographically spaced, cooperating individuals with access to different resources could conduct daylong research projects, concentrating on a particular research goal, and accomplish more in less time and with better results.

This demonstration will be tricky because we are attempting to compress a weekend-long project into a single conference session. Consequently, field volunteers must research, gather, digitize, and upload sources prior to the session and then be available during the session. The session (F308) is at 8:00AM MDT (10am EDT, 7am PDT) on Friday, 30 April 2010.

The research project is to gather digital images of original source documents for the family and descendents of Peyton C Clements (1805-1870) and Angeline Rencher (1818-1870). The scenario will begin with a document from Peyton's probate file which lists his heirs. (See http://www.footnote.com/image/257662011 or on Ancestry.com: http://tinyurl.com/235zp56 )

* An NGS attendee with laptop and wireless modem is needed to attend the session and manage Tweet communications with the field volunteers

Field volunteers are needed to visit locations mentioned in the probate file and gather documents about the heirs mentioned:

* Eutaw, Greene, Alabama

* Forkland, Greene, Alabama

* Methodist Cemetery, Forkland

* Fort Deposit, Lowndes, Alabama

* Myrtlewood Cemetery, Fort Deposit

* Greenwood, Mississippi

* Hale County, Alabama

During the session participants will communicate using Twitter and contribute their results via Footnote.com. Prior to the session, ascertain if the Footnote.com user license is acceptable to you, register on Footnote.com, upload your images to your gallery, and add proper source citations.

If you plan on participating, contact me for further instructions.

Thanks,

Robert Raymond
Information Division
FamilySearch, a service of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

___________________________________________________________

E-mail:  Robert.Raymond@familysearch.org
Office:  JSMB 6W

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

That sounds interesting. I wonder if anyone can “listen in” on the tweets? I’ll see what I can find out and let you know.

Follow NGS on Twitter

If you can’t attend, watch for my tweets during the show and my articles afterwards. It looks like most people are using #NGS. While #NGS has also been used recently for “Next Generation Sequencing” and a Russian transportation company, it looks like NGS Conference tweets may dominate. #NGS10 is also being used. I think I will use the later only if things get ugly on #NGS.

If none of that paragraph made sense to you, then keep an eye out for my articles following the conference.