NFS Fireside I Would Love to Attend

Here is what is going on in the Washington DC Temple area:

Next Generation Genealogy System - Fireside Invitation for Interested Parties

Dear Stake Presidents,

As most of you are aware, the church has established a large computer server farm in the Ashburn area for the next generation of tools and databases for genealogical research and temple work. President Hinckley has mentioned this project in a couple of his conference addresses over the past two of years. This system is currently in the process of being brought on-line. Members from several stakes in the area have volunteered to help install and support the servers in this facility in the past as the initial build-out has been underway.

With the services now starting to go "live", there is a growing interest in the server farm and in the services that it will support. Members of the project team in Salt Lake will be in town on September 19th and have agreed to host a fireside at the Ashburn Stake Center for anyone interested in hearing more about the current status of the project and the scope of work
that is currently underway.

This is a rare opportunity to hear first-hand about the church's substantial ongoing investment in preserving and organizing genealogical records and making them available via the Internet. The new system includes both the familysearch web site (old and new) and also the new familysearchindexing site which is the latest incarnation of the extraction program. It will make it easier to sub mit family file names to the temple and to coordinate research with near- and distant-relatives around the world without the duplication that has plagued genealogy research in the past. The fireside will likely be of particular interest to Family History Center workers, indexing volunteers, and all those interested in genealogical research.

The fireside is open to anyone who would like to attend. It will start at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, September 19th, at the Ashburn Stake Center (21015 CLAIBORNE PARKWAY, ASHBURN, VA 20147) and will end by 9:00 pm. Please feel free to include this in stake or ward bulletins and/or forward it to any other interested parties.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

President Chapman
Agent Stake President, Ashburn Server Farm
Ashburn Virginia Stake

[Renee's Note: If you attend I would love to hear what you learned!]