The First Post

My excitement is mounting as, in two days, I will take off for the Rootstech Conference in Salt Lake City where, as Geniaus, I am an official blogger.

I heard this morning that 1800 people have registered for the conference...that's a lot of genealogists and I want to meet many and find out about them. As I was sipping my coffee in bed this morning I recalled some books that were popular when I worked with kids. Called Authors and Illustrators Scrapbooks they had a page devoted to each sperson that provided a short bio and some personal information.

Following the model in these books I thought that I would prepare a pro forma with a list of questions that I could ask some of the people I meet to complete and that I could post these profiles on the web. I then thought about all the wonderful genealogists I have met in Australia and who do not have a presence on Facebook, Twitter or a Blog, I'd really like to profile some of these GeniMates who do fabulous work in local societies, as volunteer indexers or in their day to day jobs. There are a number of directories of genealogists around but these tend to be serious in nature and concentrate on professional genealogists.

I could post these profiles on the Geniaus blog but I'd like to give them their own home. I thought about putting up a website but blogging is so much easier so I decided to set up a new blog using a newly created Google account. I pondered about names for the blog: genipals, geniprofiles, genibods but decided using Mates in the title would add a bit of Australian flavour.

Once I have thought of the questions and headings for my proforma I will have it ready for Rootstech. Down the track I might make a soft copy available via this blog.

I don't want to make this too onerous so only promise one or two profiles per week, that is, if I can get anyone to take part. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

If you have any suggestions for this project please post a comment on this blog or email me at GeniMates@gmail.com.