Suzie Kolber offers practical advice for turning genealogical research into a family tree designed to be displayed and shared. The piece considers layout, family structure, the amount of information to include, visual presentation, and the sensitivities that can arise when a chart makes gaps or unusual relationships conspicuous. Beneath the craft advice is a larger heritage idea: family history becomes more meaningful when research is translated into something people can actually encounter together.
Tag Archives: Genealogy
Posts about genealogy, family history, ancestry research, and digital approaches to connecting people with shared heritage.
Rootstech Family History & Technology Conference – Day 1.2
Charleen Mullenweg’s field notes from the first RootsTech conference capture genealogy at a moment of rapid technological change. From portable scanners and laptops to new storage options and research tools, the conference floor made visible how dramatically family-history practice was shifting. Her account is valuable not just as a list of gadgets, but as evidence of genealogy becoming a technology-driven field while still remaining fundamentally concerned with people, evidence, memory, and connection.
Rootstech Family History & Technology Conference – Day 1
Reporting from the inaugural RootsTech conference, Charleen Mullenweg encounters a gathering built explicitly around the convergence of genealogy and technology. Her observations capture both the enthusiasm and the learning curve of a field adapting to new digital research methods, online communities, and emerging tools. The piece documents a moment when family history was moving decisively beyond archives and desktop software toward a more connected ecosystem of platforms, devices, institutions, and individual researchers.
Mike O’Laughlin of the Irish Roots Cafe talks about discovering shared family history through new media
Irish Roots Cafe founder Mike O’Laughlin discusses genealogy as both personal research and public storytelling. The conversation explores how podcasting, publishing, websites, and other emerging media could help people discover shared family history, build communities around ancestry, and make specialized genealogical knowledge accessible beyond traditional research settings. It is an early example of digital platforms turning family history into a participatory media practice.
Social Networking for Family History
Genealogy Gems founder Lisa Louise Cooke traces her path from sharing a research discovery on a Family History Center bulletin board to building a podcast and online network reaching genealogists around the world. Her story illustrates how social tools changed genealogy from a largely individual research pursuit into a networked practice of exchanging methods, clues, discoveries, and encouragement. The technology changed the scale, but the underlying impulse remained the same: researchers helping one another find people.
On a personal note … thank you
A year-end thank-you from 2009 that doubles as a snapshot of the early heritage blogosphere: genealogy, archaeology, conservation, museum participation, WordPress, local history, and the personal networks that helped Voices of the Past grow. The post also records an important piece of project history—Lorelle VanFossen helped give Voices of the Past its name.
Podcast: Lisa Louise Cooke on podcasting genealogy and the importance of audience
Genealogy Gems founder Lisa Louise Cooke discusses how podcasting can transform a specialized interest into an ongoing relationship with an audience. The conversation looks at genealogy, media production, consistency, and the work required to grow a recognizable digital platform. Her experience demonstrates that successful online heritage work depends not only on good information, but on understanding who the audience is and giving people reasons to return.
Voices of the Past Video Netcast: Genealogy Gems’ Lisa Louise Cooke on establishing roots in the social web
Lisa Louise Cooke explains how Genealogy Gems grew into a major online genealogy platform through experimentation with podcasting and other social media. This video focuses on the learning curve behind that growth and on the importance of using digital tools to create genuine connection with an audience. It captures genealogy at a moment when family-history communities were rapidly moving from individual research toward networked sharing and media production.
Heritage DIY: Create and Preserve your Family Tree the Web 2.0 Way
<b>By Dylan Staley</b> <p> Geni is a web based family tree maker that is using the idea of Web 2.0 and collaboration to make finding your long lost relatives easier. Geni, built by some of the people that brought you PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe, allows you to work with your family members on building your family tree. So, you may not know your second great grandmother’s husband’s name, but your grandmother’s sister may know, and Geni provides the platform to allow this knowledge to travel the great distances that often separate families.</p> <br />