NERGC 2017 ~ Day 3

After two days at NERGC of really exercising my brain (see Day 1 and Day 2), I decided to listen to some general-level sessions with particularly excellent speakers for my last day.

Elizabeth and Thomas

Thomas MacEntee, founder of Geneabloggers, spoke on Managing the Genealogy Data Monster, a topic that genealogists at every level can use at least some help with! Thomas is very organized, providing lots of wonderful suggestions on how to work with a research log, as well as sharing tips on file naming conventions. The main takeaway there is to just be consistent. (I've got some work to do...)  If you ever get a chance to hear Thomas speak, be sure to do so!

I then got to hear Diahan Southard speak on Your DNA in Action: Real Time, Hands-On Fun. I had interviewed Diahan for this blog in February, so it was great to meet her and see her present in person. This was a class where attendees could login to their own AncestryDNA accounts and follow along as she explained how to pose a genealogical research question and begin to answer it using the searching and filtering features at AncestryDNA. I picked up a few tips and tricks in this session that I look forward to using!

After lunch, where we heard from Jane E. Wilcox speaking about Forget Me Not: Remembering Our Grandmother's Stories, I volunteered to help out at the booth for MSOG, the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists.

The exhibit hall at the conference was free and open to the public and I could see, especially on Saturday, that there were lots of visitors who came who were not registered for the conference.

Here is the MSOG booth at a rare down time that it was not full of people, either MSOG members meeting up or attendees looking to join this great group. Even if you do not live in Massachusetts, the membership is worth it (only $25 for a year!) because of the webinar series that is offered only to members. In fact, if you join now, your membership will be good through the summer of 2018.

I had to leave the conference before the end of Saturday, knowing that I had made many new genealogy friends, as well as renewing some friendships over the subject we all enjoy.

Looking forward to NERGC 2019 in Manchester, New Hampshire!