Legacy Matters

Reunions and Genealogy Blogs

If you want to plan a family reunion, Sue Shellenberger in the Wall Street Journal suggests you make a long-term plan, a year or 18 months out.  That way, people can organize their over-stuffed calendars around the event. 

Reunions Magazine has a website with helpful tips and resources.
You can even set up your own reunion website at myevent.com.

Be prepared though for infection. When far flung and extended families get together for reunions, members  often catch the contagious genealogy bug, symptoms of which include

• a sudden fever to explore family history
• an itch to pay for the premium at ancestry.com
• sudden hankerings for extended vacations to search family beginnings often resulting in excessive time in old cemeteries, churches and courthouses.
• an increased appetite for history of all sorts.
• a sudden desire to interview an old uncle you spent a lifetime avoiding.

The genealogy bug is not fatal, though it may last a lifetime.  Some call it a 'grave' disease.

Organizing family history material can be daunting, especially when several people and families are involved.  A website is just too clunky.  Blogs work the best.

Bill Ives, a former academic psychologist, became an independent consultant, an expert on knowledge management when he began blogging, the love of which set him on a path to Web 2.0 that  included business blogging, blog coaching and pod consulting with plenty of time left over for restaurant blogging.

Now he has taken his experience and expertise to begin two family blogs.  Check out how he expands his family's history on both sides via blogs. 

Ives Family History Blog
Sharpe Family in NC

Each post is a little history lesson on an ancestor, an essay or a photo or illustration.  Because blogs offer the ability to add tags and categories, they are a wonderfully cheap content management tool where you can find what you're looking for quickly through an embedded search tool or through a category search.  By publishing on the web, Bill has opened up his research to other family members and those who find him while researching their own family  histories. 

Using technology, he's expanded his resources and his reach, now and in the future.  Or as one wag said, "genealogy is collecting dead relatives and an occasional live cousin."