Genealogy Goals For 2012

This seems to be a common genealogy blog topic, so here’s my go. I didn’t do goals for last year, so I can’t judge them.

In 2011, I made my business paperless by using Android. I tried previously with my PDA but it didn’t work. I finally finished scanning all the family photos that had been given to me years ago and I organized all my photos on my computer. I began re-organizing all my genealogy documents, but only got part way when I switched to the photos. At the beginning of the year, I reprogrammed my family web site, but now I need to add the photos back in. Since they’re organized, it should be easier, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.

And that brings me to my goals for 2012.

1. Go to Europe.

The IAJGS conference is in Paris in 2012. However, it’s losing it’s appeal to me for a few reasons. A cousin of mine is going to Poland and has arranged for a day tour of our ancestral town. It is almost exactly one month before the conference, so to go to both, I’d have to stay in Europe for over a month or fly home and back in the same month. Both options are not appealing to me. But if I skip the conference, I can easily plan for a June trip.

2. Organize my documents.

I started this in 2011. Then my cousin asked about pictures on the web site and I switched to organizing those, which I finished. Now I have to get back to the documents, making sure everything has a good digital copy and is sourced better in my program.

3. Get pictures on the family web site.

I finished organizing them. Now I have to write the programming to link them up to the database and then get them on the web site.

4. Blog more.

I’ve had some busy times, then some slow times. Also, I started another blog to post a picture a day. It started really well, but December was terrible and I skipped days all over the place. There will also be a new society blog for me to keep up with very soon. Also, don’t leave off Nitpicker’s Versions of WDYTYA episodes until the next season starts. Again. Yes, I know I still have one more to do.

Business Goals

1. Don’t procrastinate emails.

I end up taking upwards of an hour sometimes to answer an initial genealogy inquiry, so I tend to procrastinate on those. Like my photo blog, it got much worse in December. I had 100 near the end of the year. I have less than 30 now in my inbox, and still several that need answering. But at least none are a month old anymore.

2. Invoice better.

This also includes for my web development business.

I have some other smaller things, but they fall in line with not procrastinating emails and updating my family web site. I did improve on some things last year, so now I get another chance to improve even more.

Also, just writing this blog post means I’m blogging more, right? :-)

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Late addition: Index more.

I forgot about this one. (Kind of like I keep forgetting to index the pages I already have?) I’m part of one indexing project and I haven’t been doing much lately. I need to finish the pages I’ve got and do more. I also want to get my society indexing, so I assume I’ll be doing at least some of that too.

5 thoughts on “Genealogy Goals For 2012”

  1. Hi, Banai,
    Wow! I’m impressed with your list of goals. Reminds me that I’ve got many similar ones myself. Maybe we can monitor each other to be sure we’re sticking to our goals? Did I miss your blog on the photo?

    1. There were some other bloggers talking about using the buddy system to keep up with our goals. I would not mind having a buddy helping to keep me on track.

      I don’t advertise the photo blog much; just a couple of times so far. It’s more of a journal for myself. And the kind of thing I would kill to find from an ancestor. http://idogenealogy.com/39/

  2. Oof – the part about procrastinating with e-mails should have been one of my goals. OK, so you, I, and the gatepost know it – I gotta stop procrastinating with e-mails!

    1. I had over 100 emails in my inbox not too long ago. I had just deleted a few when I noticed the 99 count. I’m still under 30 for a few days now, but could do better if I would just finish all my replies.

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