Mark Your Calendars - UVPAFUG Meeting!

UTAH VALLEY PAF USERS GROUP MEETING

The next regular, second-Saturday-of-the-month meeting of the Utah Valley PAF (Personal Ancestral File) Users Group will be on Saturday, 13 Jun 2009, from 9 am until noon IN THE EDGEWOOD/RIVERSIDE LDS CHAPEL, 3511 North 180 East, Provo, Utah. The chapel is behind the Jamestown shopping plaza on the east side of University Avenue in the Provo "River Bottoms". You get to it by turning east from University Avenue at 3700 North ("Will's Pit Stop") and then south on 180 East. There is a map showing the new and old locations on the group's website http://uvpafug.org .

The main presentation for this meeting will be by Beau Sharbrough on GENEALOGY IN 2020. In 2020, you won't use your web browser to look up your pedigree chart, linked to all the sources already. That will be ancient history. In 2020, you'll attend a family reunion and have dinner with the animated holograms of your ancestors. What questions would you ask your ancestors? This will be a presentation of a "report" from a person who was the historical subject of such a meeting, and asking "How did you get so much of my life wrong?" This is a cautionary tale about assuming that records tell everything about a person, and the risks of reasoning from the general to the specific. We currently place lots of emphasis on vital events (birth, marriage, death) to make sure we know exactly which person we are talking about. In the future we will probably be able to use relationships and put more "meat on the genealogy bones" and know more about the individuals themselves. Many people now refer to that as "family history" and just the dates and places as "genealogy". For members of the LDS Church that's the full version of "turning the hearts of the children to their fathers".

Houston native Beau Sharbrough received a Philosophy BA from Texas A&M in 1977. His programming career began in 1980, and he is presently self-employed. He is the founder of the FGS web site, the GENTECH web site, and the Lexicon Working Group. He is a former president of GENTECH and has previously worked as a Product Manager for tree products at Ancestry.com and as Vice President of Content at Footnote.com. Beau writes regularly on technical topics in family history, with an occasional overdose of humor, and maintains the RootsWorks.com website. He is the author of Gene's Anniversary Scrapbook. This promises to be an interesting discussion.

Following the main presentation there will be several classes taught concerning technology and family history. As usual, there will be something for everyone at all levels of expertise. The classes currently scheduled for this meeting are the following:

1. FamilySearch Indexing and RecordSearch, by Duane Dudley
2. Medieval Genealogy, by Brigham Cheney
3. Discussion: Genealogy Software for the MAC, by John McKinney
4. Workshop: Organizing Your Family History System, by Beth Ann Wiseman
5. Q&A: Genealogy in 2020, by Beau Sharbrough
6. Video of last month's main presentation: Finding Grandma Through the London Family History Centre by using the Internet Databases, Maps, and GPS's, by Don and Diane Snow
7. Legacy, by Dean Bennett
8. RootsMagic, by Sue Maxwell
9. Ancestral Quest, by Donald Engstrom

All meetings of the Users Group are open to the public whether members of the Group or not. The Users Group has the goal of helping individuals use technology to further their family history and there are usually 100-125 attending the monthly meetings on the second Saturdays. Several of the officers, including Gerhard Ruf, President; Don Snow and Brian Cooper, VP's; Beth Ann Wiseman, PAFology Editor; Kay Baker and Gerry Eliason working with finances and membership; and Bruce Merrill, Lynne Shumway, and Marie Andersen, working with the DVD Library, will all be there. They will help with membership, answer questions, distribute the current issue of the monthly newsletter PAFology, and check out DVD's of past presentations and classes to members of the group. Information about the Users Group, main presentations, classes, and class notes are available on the Group's website http://uvpafug.org and the press releases are online at http://blog.uvpafug.org/. For further information contact President Gerhard Ruf at pres@uvpafug.org (801-225-6106), VP1 Don Snow at snowd@math.byu.edu, or VP2 Brian Cooper at vp2@uvpafug.org.