Greetings all and I hope you are staying safe and healthy. These are certainly trying times.
As you may be aware, the Mesa Public Library system has been shut down since mid-March due to the COVID-19 response and is projecting to open no earlier than October. This has of course put a hold on my schedule of providing monthly classes at the library including one I was scheduled to teach next Wednesday. I began teaching these classes back in January 2018. I greatly enjoy teaching about genetic genealogy and so do miss this void. I fully intend on resuming my teaching once some degree of normalcy returns.
In the meantime, I have been able to use some of the extra time productively. For example I set up a computerized mailing list. One advantage of that is to allow you to subscribe or unsubscribe on your own. That will be more efficient for all. Also, I’m hoping to allow that list to integrate with my blog which I’ll be going back to keeping current. And, I did add a link on my webpage to subscribe to updates. That took about 10 hours of WordPress training to figure it out, whew!
Another thing that was on my wish list to accomplish was to come up with my own logo for a little better branding. I hope you like it! It does give some identity to Arizona and has a symbol of DNA on it but, more importantly, is overlaid atop a depiction of the globe, thus emphasizing the fact that we are connected with people all across the world through our DNA.
I’m also exploring the possibility of maybe producing some tutorial videos. This is something new for me so may take awhile to polish my video production skills but at least it’s a goal right now.
Even though classes, workshops, and conferences have been cancelled there are still great opportunities to learn more about Genetic Genealogy. In particular, I’d like to give a big pitch to the wide variety of webinars that are available, many of them free at least for a short time. I signed up for notifications of Legacy Family Tree Webinars which are usually free for one week. Also, I signed up to get updates from Thomas MacEntee at https://abundantgenealogy.com/. I have found these to be especially useful as they often point to sales and other timely updates in our field.
Lastly, if you have any suggestions on classes you’d like to see once teaching resumes or are in need of some assistance, please let me know. If you wish to unsubscribe from my updates I believe there should be a link at the bottom of my emails that will do that (this is a new way to send emails so I hope I did everything right). If you know someone who would like to get on my mailing list feel free to send them to http://familytreeaz.com and look for the subscribe box on the left. I probably send no more than 2 or 3 emails per month.
Take care and I hope to see you all real soon in an upcoming class once we get to better times.
Best Regards,
Ken
