SOCIETY ACTIVITIES The September General Meeting featured the presentation of a Washington State Genealogical Society Outstanding Volunteer award to our long-time member, Katie Hanzeli.  The award highlighted the many areas in which she has served and continues to serve SKCGS.  Lori Lee Sauber presented a method of organizing genealogical research using project management methodology.   The advantage of this method of organization is that it is easily customized to meet the needs of any researcher.   She urged using a version of this method to avoid “abandoned” genealogy projects   It also helps keep the researcher on track to complete a project by a self-imposed or outside imposed deadline.   As a result of her presentation, I have revisited Trello.   It is easy to set up the project board. You receive positive reinforcement when you move the task card to the “Completed” column. We welcomed one returning member, Pat Noecker, and three ...

By Barbara Mattoon Longer, lighter days beckon us outside to enjoy spring flowers, sunshine and warm breezes, but there are still many opportunities to advance our genealogy knowledge and practice.  March 31 is World Backup Day.  One small accident or failure could destroy all your important stuff, including your genealogy research.  Genealogy pundits recommend backing up three ways.  There is plenty of information online on how to do it. Watch for Valorie Zimmerman’s April 1 blog post titled Civil War Veteran Found in the Woods.  Is it an April Fools’ joke? The Board of Directors will meet Tuesday, April 2, at the Valley Regional Fire Authority, 1101 D St. NE, Auburn, at 7:00 pm.  It will be preceded by  a 2020 Seminar Committee meeting at 6:00 pm.  All members are encouraged to attend both meetings.  There are several open committee assignments for the seminar. Saturday, April 6, Winona Laird will present Family Tree Maker’s new ...

By Barbara Mattoon The Society offers many opportunities to learn and develop genealogy skills in both large and small groups. We endeavor to offer activities at times and locations that will allow the largest number of members to participate.  March will  kick-off with the F amily T ree M aker U sers G roup meeting on Saturday March 2, at the Auburn Library from 10:15 – 11:45.  Winona Laird will teach us how to use Error Reports in FTM.  Please RSVP to Dave Liesse at ftm-group@skcgs.org as soon as you know you can attend.  We are outgrowing our space at the Auburn Library and may have to find an alternate location.  If that happens, we want to be able to let you know where to find us. ANNOUNCEMENT                          ANNOUNCEMENT                       ANNOUNCEMENT   Our long-awaited DNA Special Interest Group...

By Valorie Zimmerman 2018 was a great year for South King County Genealogical Society, and we anticipate 2019 will be even better. We began the year by launching our new website at http://skcgs.org . Our mail list at Rootsweb was down for awhile, but is back. Our Seminar was tremendous, and we're planning another for 2020. We have had some great speakers at our regular meetings, we've placed for our formerly traveling library at the Kent Family History Center , have renewed our contract with the King County Library System to present our book collection to south King County at the Auburn Library , and have many thriving special interest groups. We had a very successful Intermediate Genealogy class following our 2018 meetings, taught by Winona Baird. Winona also began offering our Research Workshops in 2018. Our Board of Directors meets monthly at the Auburn Fire Station; all meetings are open to SKCGS members. Volunteers staff Genealogy Help tables monthly at three so...

By Dave Liesse Family Tree Maker is, and always has been, a powerful genealogy database tool.  In fact, when I first adopted it decades ago it was because as a database professional myself I could recognize the excellence of the underlying database design.  At the time it may not have been the most intuitive program for non-technical users, but I definitely was not in that category! Over the years the program has changed owners several times and has been upgraded regularly.  Now it resembles the many office suites (Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, Open Office, etc.) in one key respect: the number of features that go unused is constantly climbing!  The purpose of this post is to let you know about some of those features that you might have a good use for, if you only knew about them. Let's start with the task list.  If you're like I was you've seen the "Tasks" bar on the Plan page or perhaps on the Person tab on the People page. These are quite powe...

By  Barbara Mattoon Dave Liesse presented “Lesser Known Features of Family Tree Maker” at the Family Tree Maker Users Group November 3.  It was a fast paced, fact-filled presentation.  Dave has agreed to write it as a blog post to be published December 17, 2018. The Board of Directors held its regular meeting November 6.  In addition to regular business we held a round-robin discussion on how each of us could personally recruit and retain members.  Everyone made a commitment to an action that they would personally take.  You will notice that the loop is now on our web page.  Those who staff Library Help Desks committed to write personal notes to those they helped, and the President committed to write personal notes to guests attending the general meeting.  Both of these actions have been effective. Publicity Chair, Cheri Sayer and President Barbara Mattoon attended a Media Strategy Workshop presented by SoCo Culture on November 14.  T...

By Barbara Mattoon To communicate with our members more frequently than a quarterly newsletter, the Board of Directors has decided to initiate a weekly blog post.  The blog will contain: Society news and announcements as well as current news items of interest to genealogists, Book reviews, interviews, suggestions for research, Articles about local locations of interest to those studying family history and Stories from our members and other Washington State Societies.   Most of you have already learned the benefits of belonging to a local society (or more than one).   However, I am sure that when you talk with others about the Society, they say “Why would I want to join the South King County Genealogical Society?   My family is not from this area”.   Here are a few things you could share to convince them to join: One of the most important reasons to join is to draw on the knowledge of a group of experienced genealogists.    I...