FSGS Report

This past weekend I attended the Florida State Genealogical Society Conference in Maitland, Florida. Maitland is just outside of Orlando in central Florida. The conference, held at the Sheraton Orlando North Hotel, was well attended with about 200 attendees. Lloyd de Witt Bockstruck was the keynote speaker and he presented four sessions. Being a bit of a history buff, I enjoyed his War of 1812 session the most. There is a wealth of information about the men who served during that conflict but most records have not been digitized. His presentations were well presented; he was well prepared, knowledgeable and very witty.

Between his sessions there were breakout sessions with other speakers. It was difficult to pick which to attend since there were 3 or 4 going on at the same. I attended” Effective Websites for Genealogical Societies” with Tom Ryder since I maintain our society’s internet presence. I also attended Social Networking for Genealogical Researches with Drew Smith. He’s a national speaker and does a weekly podcast with George Morgan. Also, I attended “Putting your family tree online” with Donna Moughty. As you can see, they were all mostly technology orientated. Even though I know how to do all of these things, if you don’t stay current with technology it just seems to pass you by making everything more difficult to accomplish.

The highlight, at least for me, was when I was awarded the Genealogy Outstanding Achievement Award presented by the FSGS at the Friday evening banquet. I was nominated by The Villages Genealogical Society. The nomination read in part … “he has volunteered constantly whenever needed since joining the society. As our membership grew from 100 in 2006 to over 500 in 2011, he wrote a program to handle the membership activity and create needed reports. Besides being the Treasurer, webmaster and newsletter editor, he also serves as our All-Day Family History Seminar Chairman, which occurs every February. He is the VGS’s “go to guy” and so greatly appreciated.”

That small acknowledgement was very much appreciated but I must end this report now since I have to teach Legacy Family Tree software this morning and Family Tree Maker this afternoon and the monthly newsletter goes out this evening.