Gatherings: Office Hours & Roundtable Discussions twice each month
When MissionGenealogy started, our core goals were to help us as family historians and genealogists help each other here on Substack. Now we can help each other across global time zones.
As collaborators on this crazy idea for a community centered on a mission of genealogy,
and I have been thrilled by the response. After launching four months ago, we’ve seen a growing number of fellow travelers join us to share tips, insight, and encouragement.To support the community's success with genealogy on Substack, we devised two hour-long collaboration sessions each month. One to trade tech tips, “Office Hours,” and a second to compare notes on our genealogy work, the “Roundtable.”
Though the sessions were held at 10 AM Pacific / 1 PM Eastern time here in the Americas and in the early evening in Europe, we found hearty souls1 in Australia and New Zealand regularly mustering the effort to join us in the wee hours of the morning. It’s time to adjust.
Starting with the new year…
We’ll continue to host two sessions a month, but now, each session will be 90 minutes long and combine Office Hours and Roundtable functions.
Starting this week (and the first Tuesday or Wednesday of each month), our sessions will be scheduled in our afternoons for the convenience of our friends in the Pacific region. Should you wonder what that is in your time zone, here you go, plus here’s a convenient link to register:
Americas: 4/7 PM PT/ET in the Americas
Pacific Rim: 7 AM AWST, 10 AM AEDT, and 1 PM NZDT in New Zealand
Europe: 12 AM GMT and 1 AM CET (🤫 you should be sleeping)
Next week (and the second Tuesday of each month,) our sessions will be scheduled in our mornings for the convenience of our friends in the Atlantic region. Again, a convenient link and your list of times to share with others.2
Americas: 10 AM PT, 1 PM ET,
Europe: 6 PM GMT, 19:00 CET
Pacific Rim: (+1 day) 7 AM NZDT, 5 AM AEDT, 2 AM AWST (😴 you should fast asleep)
Remember, you can track the times using the MissionGenealogy.org/events calendar. Since I host events for the
all time, you’ll also find these events on the Projectkin calendar (that little re-direct ☝️ just makes it easier to remember.)Speaking of special events…
I know many of you (though not all — hint3) are already members of Projectkin and may have seen my first Substack LIVE event yesterday. I’d been excited about it as a feature since it was announced, but frankly didn’t think I had access to it until this weekend4.
It was all over in less than 15 minutes, but that was the plan. The video quality is superb and was easy for me to reshare as a video post. Once a week, I’ll be using this nifty new Substack feature to share what’s ahead with my Projectkin members and chat with anyone who joins me live. There’s no registration, it all just happens in the app.
Since our first “Gathering” of the year for
is this week, I invited to join me on the live session. Plus, I’m a coward and was both gracious and brave when I invited her. Robin, of course, is the much more serious genealogist and the host of (heads-up, here’s another hint5).I hope you enjoy (or enjoyed) Sunday’s Live session as it’s an approach I plan to continue with for
and will be the topic of my super-short presentation at the top of our Office Hours segment of the Gatherings this month. To give you a sense of it, take a look at the recording of today’s Live session:I’ve shared that ☝️ as a YouTube video embed, but over on Projectkin, you can view the full video post with a transcript and linked resources. (Frankly, that’s what Substack is so good at, in my view.)
More about how all of that works during the Office Hours segment of our Gathering this week and next. Robin and I are looking forward to seeing you. Till then, TTFN 👋.
UPDATE:
Well, now this is a tad embarrassing. I was so excited about my Projectkin Substack LIVE program on Sunday that I included the
poll about breakout rooms for the Pacific Gathering in the post about the Substack Live program and not here. Silly me. 🤦♀️ Oh well. I think Robin and I can manage to consider two polls:You know who you are. We thank you, truly. 👀
Over at Projectkin I’m working on a time-zone widget to make this all easier and less error prone.
Consider this that shameless plug for my own , a Substack publication helping families everywhere find ways to tell their family stories — in any form that makes sense to them. We’re a free community of family historians hooked on stories.
I have no idea how long it’s been there as a feature waiting for me. 🤦♀️
And my plugging would not be complete without a plug for Robin’s substack. She’s a font of wisdom about tools for genealogists and hosts our community newspaper, GenStack, a weekly post with the best genealogy and family history blogs, newsletters, podcasts, and videos.
I’m so inspired by how much thought and care you’ve put into building a truly inclusive and collaborative genealogy community. These gatherings sound like such a valuable resource, not just for learning, but for fostering genuine connection across time zones and borders—love it!
Hey, late to the show here but I’m finally catching up and wanted to thank you, Barbara and Robin, for the commitment, forethought and just nurturing hearts you have for this community. I’m at turns inspired and humbled by you both and so very grateful!
As for potential topics, writing process is always a great choice, as we all approach it differently and there’s so much I think we can learn from each other.
Time management sounds like low hanging fruit, but it’s something I struggle with, especially as this vibrant community continues to grow and my “to read” list gets longer. Robin, your weekly GenStack has truly been a blessing - thanks!