Friday, January 27, 2012

Question for you all." Are there any old GFS staffers as bloggers out there?"

   Question for you all." Are there any old GFS staffers as bloggers out there?"

  Having had a delightful surprise in a chat room this morning it prompted this chatty topic.
  I know we have a lot of bloggers out there and not many read my posts but I think it would be
  fun to see how many are still searching away and active in various hangout events through out
  the Genealogical Community.

  What is a GFS'er you ask?  Genealogy Forum Staff person, we hosted over 113 chats on a steady basis
   in the old Golden Gate Forum of AOL. We were sponsored by George F.  I met many of them at
   the NGS in San Diego in 1995 and I met many at later events that SDGS hosted that we held a both at
  for other people to find us  online.

  We all worked and shared our files and found that most of us had a connection to at least ten other
  hosts via our lineages.  We used to call "BINGO" when two people or more would match person of
  ancestry.

  This morning I popped into the GenealogyWise chat room and run head on into a cousin I had not
  talked to in about a year or so. I know that others from the old Forum are in that chat area but they
  and I never linked family yet.  

  We would have from 20 to 40 people in a chat room at a time learning information, sharing information
   and swapping research stories.  We were fortunate to have rooms of various sizes so we could
   have large and small events.  We even had a room to do very large community events.

  I miss the sharing for it helped us almost have a Brick Wall Breaking Event at each chat, everyone
  shared how they approached a problem and many times, several in the room would spend the week
  working on the problem to get a person out of the hole.

  We had people affiliated with the National Archives, Library of Congress, Pennsylvania main Library,
  and the list could go on and on.  With the broad amount of areas represented by attendees we could
  learn where to look for information, sharing this with others whom were just starting.

 George thanks for giving me the joy of doing those great days with those great people.

 I hosted five chats each week and co hosted two more with cousins, we later learned.

5 comments:

  1. Susi,
    I had no idea that you had been "doing" genealogy for so long. I'm glad you defined GFS, because I wasn't familiar with them. Very interesting post. Have you met Joneses there?

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  2. Kathy, Mom started me young as a helper, our first child created dire need to learn of husbands family. Cold called them and son is now 51 almost.
    I have worked genealogy very heavy since 1978 when he graduated from his school and the other ones were old enough I could hop off to LDS library. Got first computer in 1980's. I worked the Forum for 8+ years then worked another Forum for friend for five years then another forum and that cousin passed away named Mike Sandridge from Ohio. You may have been familiar with him. I then taught with Rita Ely on the Genealogy Wise for a couple of years. Last year was not good due to family not well all over the USA. Yes I did meet other Joneses :>)

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  3. The Golden Gate Forum is where I met distant kin Paul REED.

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  4. DearMYRTLE checking in Susi. Amazing that so many of our pioneering Golden Gates Genealogy Forum staffers are still going strong and influencing genealogists both on and off the net!

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  5. Dear (Pat) Myrtle, Sending love and hugs your way. Hope to see you in Burbank in June.

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