Jamboree: A great story

The Jamboree's "local paper" - The Burbank Leader - ran a nice story on the event, with a spotlight on how researchers are climbing their family trees with online help from blogs, Twitter and Facebook. It also revealed how ancestry hunting has become high-tech.

New technology, like blogs, are one of the new ways people are finding their relatives, said the event's co-chair Paula Hinkel, who was quoted in the story.

“There are lots of different blogs,” she said. “Some let you know about new products and services for genealogy research. Some are blogs about particular family research. For example, one of our bloggers put up all his family on a blog — text and pictures of his family history.”

Some blogs provide a specific type of family research, like Tracing the Tribe, which is just for those of Jewish faith, and then some bloggers create podcasts, she said.

“It all fits in this new world of communication,” she said. “We have a lot of Twitter people at the jamborees. It’s just another way to communicate with each other and find potential cousins. It’s all about finding family members who are trying to trace families.”

Hey, Paula - thanks for the pointer to Tracing the Tribe!

The article also covered the first day's free workshops, including the Kids Family History Camp, which attracted more than 85 young people, ages 8-16. Paula also said that many society members started out as Boy and Girl Scouts doing it for merit badges. She still has her badge.

Paula and I share many ideas on how to bring family history research to our young people, who will be taking over from us in the future. It is a great achievement to get a young interested in this search.

“One of the things that society members worry about is who is going to take over our research when we are gone,” she said. “When we get a kid interested, it’s a win for us.”

It is an excellent article touching on many important points.

Read the complete story at the link above.